Elegantly balanced, dense and ripe, Guillory's novel illuminates things alien to most, and although ugly and hard at times,...
A masterful debut novel about a young man reckoning with his family on the tough streets of Houston in the 1980s.
Guillory balances the details of the 1980s with post–Civil War history to bring continuity to the Creole-speaking, culturally steeped Boudreaux family, living in the “hood” that is South Park, Houston. Ti’ John, short for Petit John, fully John Paul Boudreaux Jr., narrates life in a well-intentioned family where mother is a devout Catholic and father is a riotous character hard to forget. Time bounces sensuously from 1870s to 1940s Louisiana to 1980 Texas, and the language and dialect change with place. In Louisiana, Haitian French flows beautifully, “ancient and powerful,” not dark or ominous like the tough talk of the ghetto kids on a steamy street where murders are woven into the fabric of the neighborhood. Ti’ John is schooled in the ways of the Creole healers by his father, John Frenchy, who has a way with horses, dice and women. But knowledge of the past crosses into the mystical as the Burning Wood Man, an uncle hanged in 1953, appears as a dark guardian for Ti’ John’s education. There is a great rhythm in this novel—in language as well as action. When the healers speak, it is from a place deep in the earth. When the street kids speak, it is in the immediacy of growing up and exotic hopes: red Now and Later candy, cars, girls, drugs, and, in Ti’ John’s case, a future that his mother has worked and prayed for. There is poetry in the ways of the Creole Boudreaux family history, in the voodoo and zydeco, and in a young man going off to college.
Elegantly balanced, dense and ripe, Guillory's novel illuminates things alien to most, and although ugly and hard at times, it brings hope, no matter the dark secrets of family.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9911-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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