A smooth, gripping yarn, though it doesn’t quite deliver all it promises.
A kind man whose violent outbursts rob him of all he loves is the protagonist of Hyde’s third novel, slightly glib but possessing some of the quiet poignancy of its predecessor, Pay It Forward (2000).
Like a modern-day Job, Hayden Reese has been sorely tried. It’s bad enough that his hound Jenny, beloved companion of many years, died; that his lover, Laurel, went back to her husband; that he takes out his pain on the vet in his backwoods California town and ends up in jail (again); that Laurel comes around after he’s out and gets him to rescue her teenaged daughter, Peg, working against her will in a Nevada brothel; that Peg falls for him and sets in motion events that lead to Hayden lying in the dirt outside his house, bleeding from a shotgun wound inflicted by Laurel’s husband. Somehow (a bit too miraculously) he survives all of that, and angry, guilty, brawling Hayden gets another chance with Allegra, the daughter he hasn’t seen in 15 years. He’s angry because the wife he helped put through medical school left him when he nearly pummeled Allegra’s first date to death after the boy pawed her against her will. He’s guilty because he was having a first sexual encounter of his own when his reckless younger brother, whom Hayden had been ordered to be responsible for, decided to climb a transmission tower using a grappling hook and was electrocuted. And he’s brawling because that’s the way his strapping, archconservative father was; although he hates the man and beat him up before leaving home for good, using brute force was the only way he learned to cope with adversity. Now Allegra is getting married and wants him there, but first he has to make peace with the demons that have beset him for so much of his life.
A smooth, gripping yarn, though it doesn’t quite deliver all it promises.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-7432-1118-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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