Harington rides again.
The Depression years are made a mite less depressing by the likable protagonist of this latest of Harington’s ongoing Arkansas Ozark chronicles.
He’s “Hoppy Boyd, the happy moving showman of moving pitchers,” an itinerant entrepreneur who brings good cheer in the form of cowboy movies to the inhabitants of the several towns along his route. Hoppy (real name: Landon) isn’t all that happy, however, burdened by a strong sense of his failure to amount to much and by chronic sexual frustration exacerbated no less by the infrequency of his experiences than with the nagging fear that he’s an inept lover. Matters begin improving when Hoppy permits teenaged stowaway “Carl Whitlow” to become his assistant, delightedly discovers Carl’s true identity and bolsters his traveling shows with such inspired innovations as magic tricks and buttered popcorn. Trouble looms, in the unambiguously threatening form of hellfire-and-damnation preacher Emmett Binns (who finds error and blasphemy in even popular favorite Hopalong Cassidy’s G-rated exploits), and in the outwardly pleasing one of manly storekeeper Arlis Fraught (both Hoppy’s declared best friend and his most troublesome rival). The novel meanders along amiably, and pretty much plotlessly—until all Hoppy’s films are stolen, and in desperation he exhibits Max Reinhardt’s classic 1930s film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the complications kick in. The ensuing pleasures include a rib-tickling summary of the play’s dizzying plot (from Hoppy’s hornswoggled viewpoint), and a series of mock-heroic romantic escapades that deftly echo Shakespeare while gently revealing what fools these good country people be. It’s all somewhat ragged, but Harington sells it skillfully, providing some luscious zingers: “Singing cowboys ought to be rounded up and shot,” he writes, and “There’s no understanding the human heart, let alone the human tallywhacker.” That last one belongs in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Harington rides again.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-59264-123-7
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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