A delightfully lighthearted tale that engages serious issues through farce.
A novel about big ideas in a small town.
Thomas Donaldson became the mayor of Stirling, Wisconsin, in the hope of eventually running for the state senate. Reviving a small, failing town, he thinks, would count as evidence of qualification for grander office. However, he learns that George McBurney has posted a sign on his 600-acre farm announcing his plan to build a full-scale model of Noah’s Ark as an expression of his religious belief. Thomas tries to dissuade him, but George is fiercely committed to his “Big Idea” and prepared for a protracted political fight if anyone tries to stop him. Meanwhile, Martha Downing reports that she witnessed the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, often called “BVM” for short, emblazoned on a cement wall of an underpass. Lowell Waller visits what many immediately interpret to be a shrine and regains the power of speech that he lost following a stroke. Martha and some other like-minded enthusiasts waste no time in declaring Lowell’s boon a miracle. Thomas struggles to balance his own genuine religiosity with his desire to avoid public embarrassment. Meanwhile, he tries to delicately handle public opinion about the prospect of George’s ark, which he views as a ridiculous future eyesore. Thomas also learns that his daughter, once a star student at Yale University, is undergoing hormonal therapy to become a man. Author Reed’s (Saluting the Sun, 2015, etc.) novel is wildly implausible and flirts too conspicuously with attempts to make the plot serve a greater lesson. As is often the case with intentional farce, some of the characters are reductive caricatures—more like personified punch lines than fully fleshed-out people. However, the story is so inventive and genuinely funny that readers should be able to forgive its heavy-handedness. Reed dishes out ridiculousness without devolving into manic slapstick and courageously tackles controversial issues with a graceful touch. The author rightfully lets her characters speak for themselves as much as possible, with sharp-tongued dialogue that never seems overly contrived.
A delightfully lighthearted tale that engages serious issues through farce.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9962525-5-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ampersand Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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