Tyree (Flyy Girl, 1996; A Do Right Man, 1997) returns with a well-intentioned if schematic tale of black men finding love and redemption as they begin to share the parenting burdens borne for too long by single moms. The tale is told by four alternating narrators over a period that begins in July 1997 and ends about a year later. There’s single mom Denise; then Jimmie, father of her eldest son, teenager little Jay; Walter Perry, father of her other son, Walter; and, finally, Brock, the man who loves her. After introducing themselves, the narrators chronicle their reactions to the events that have linked them. Denise recalls her teenage romance with Jimmie, her affair with Walter, and her successful struggle to go to college and own a business. Jimmie recalls his failed basketball career and his association with a gang that landed him in jail. Walter Perry, the only son of rich but unloving parents, remembers how he avoided Denise and his son after the affair, concentrating instead on his career. And Brock, a divorced truck driver with style and a loving heart, wants a —good woman— in his life. As the story begins, all four are ready for a change: Jimmie wants to get to know his son; Denise is tired of trying to manage alone; Walter wants to be a better father than his own has been; and Brock, soon after meeting Denise, feels smitten. As the months pass, the fathers learn some of the rewards of fatherhood; Denise, still suspicious of their intentions, begins to appreciate the positive way in which her sons are responding to their presence; and Brock, liked by all, finally persuades Denise to marry him. There are no major events, just an accretion of hours spent in the company of family and friends. An earnest plea for commitment with all the subtlety of a sermon from the bully pulpit.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-85592-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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