Murky, self-conscious meta-fiction, full of intellectual name-dropping.
Esteemed Hungarian writer Esterházy (Celestial Harmonies, 2004, etc.) blurs the lines between autobiography and fiction in this novel about a mother, perhaps his own, whose life centers around soccer.
There isn’t exactly a plot. The middle-aged narrator, who lives in suburban Budapest, reminisces and ruminates about his childhood and adult life with the help of literary allusions and wordplay. Sentences run on for pages while he layers impressions on top of memories, metaphors onto philosophic concepts, characters’ viewpoints within other characters’ dialogue. While trying to navigate the flood of language, American readers will find themselves grabbing at the incongruous but useful footnotes, which offer some minimal help in sorting out the onrush of names and ideas. The narrator’s 90ish mother, in failing health but still a pistol, talks incessantly about soccer (sometimes translated as football). Readers will learn more than they ever wanted to know about Hungarian players and team politics, as well as more significant issues of national politics and culture. When the narrator was growing up under communist rule, his father was brutalized as a scion of the famous Esterházy family. His mother used her passion for soccer as a survival mechanism for herself and the family. She worked in a factory that also employed members of the national team. A beautiful woman with spirit, she manipulated her ability to make friends with the players to advance her career. But the soccer team was always watched by an informer, a party member who may or may not have seduced the narrator as a child. The novel emulates Lampedusa’s The Leopard (referred to repeatedly and admiringly) in its aristocratic nostalgia and choice of an aging protagonist at the cusp of national change, but Esterházy is far more ambiguous and convoluted in his approach to history.
Murky, self-conscious meta-fiction, full of intellectual name-dropping.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-179296-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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