Rich and spicy, but an iffy plot and a little thick and slow to boil.
Award-winning Canadian author Coady’s US debut tells intertwined stories of unhappy adolescents—and unhappier adults—as their lives collide in Nova Scotia in the early 1980s.
Guy Boucher lives with his struggling-to-make-ends-meet mother, his older and mostly absent sister, and his all-too-present uncle Isadore in a rural French Canadian community outside the town of Big Harbour. Guy’s home life is a disaster. Isadore is an alcoholic bully whose new drinking pal is Guy’s English teacher, an American draft dodger. (Heavy drinking by the men here is a given and depressing constant except when they’re up at the monastery drying out.) At a dance in Big Harbour, where the Scots look down on the French, Guy meets a town girl, Corrine, who lets him dance with her five times. He pursues her with puppylike optimism, not quite picking up on her lack of interest, let alone disdain. In fact, Corrine has her own problems. Although pretty and popular, she has concocted an elaborate fantasy life complete with an older boyfriend to impress her peers, especially her sensitive, less popular friend Pam. Pam, distressed already by her father’s descent into alcoholism and joblessness, is distraught for Corrine, especially after she makes Guy sound like an obsessed stalker. Pam passes her fears for Corrine on to the even less popular, more desperate Ann. After Ann tells the gossip about Corrine to her brother, who happens to be attempting a friendship with Corrine’s own seriously troubled brother, the former high school golden boys go on a vengeful, indiscriminate rampage. Meanwhile, Guy’s mother moves with him into town to escape Isadore. Officially suspected though not exactly charged with molesting Corrine, Guy hides out with his now sober English teacher until the truth wins out.
Rich and spicy, but an iffy plot and a little thick and slow to boil.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-11976-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
