Memory, contrition, love and loss all permeate this thoughtful contemplation on the generation of radical adolescents that...
The spectacular rise and dizzying fall of a legendary Spanish desperado.
Memory, contrition, love and loss all permeate this thoughtful contemplation on the generation of radical adolescents that emerged in Spain in its post-Franco years. With an autobiographical air, Cercas (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2011, etc.) crafts a vibrant yet realistic portrait of two teenage boys who find themselves in very different circumstances in adulthood. The voice of the novel comes from Ignacio Cañas, a retired criminal defense lawyer who is being interviewed by an unnamed journalist about his early relationship with a charismatic criminal, Antonio Gamallo, who is known to Spain as “El Zarco.” In the book’s first half, we learn how the bookish, fainthearted Cañas falls in with the blue-eyed Zarco and his exotic female companion, Tere, in the late 1970s. Their deal is based around a simple bargain: “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” The drug-fueled, rebellious trio soon graduates from burglary to robbing banks. When Cañas is freed by a sympathetic police officer named Inspector Cuenca, it sets him on a different path than his felonious friends. A quarter-century later, Tere reappears in his office with María Vela, Zarco’s girlfriend, with a plea for Cañas to lead the outlaw’s defense. It’s a compelling, drawn-out story with rich period detail and emotional depth. The first half has the flavor of Jim Carroll’s post-punk autobiographical novels, while the chronicle of Zarco’s criminal career recalls the many books and films about French gangster Jacques Mesrine. It’s also hard not to feel the swirl of emotions experienced by Cañas as he wrestles with his feelings about his childhood friend and the long attraction he's held for Tere, whose role in keeping Zarco’s secrets leaves her largely at arm’s length from the rest of the world. It’s unusual for a story about popular folklore to be so grounded, but Cercas navigates this difficult maneuver with grace. A rewarding and complex novel about finding the man behind the myths.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62040-325-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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