An intriguing but uneven Red Scare tale.
A man attempts to throw a music festival while informing for the FBI in this novella.
New York, 1953. Two days after surviving his first police raid on a gay club, music manager Bruce Harnes is sent by his boss to Westchester County to the home of wealthy widow Dora Berlin. Berlin asks young Bruce to put on a summer festival on the grounds of her estate, something that he sees as an exciting niche project to help make a place for himself in the music world: “A music festival outdoors on a great estate! So much to do! Dates; artists; programs; publicity. Parking! My God, chairs! My God, what if it rained?” It appears to be a dream come true until the FBI turns up, armed with Bruce’s sexual orientation as leverage. Because of Berlin’s long-standing ties to certain Russians (she had a relationship with a prominent Russian inventor that only ended via the intervention of Stalin), the bureau demands that Bruce serve as a confidential informer, keeping tabs on Berlin and passing intelligence to his FBI handlers. Now Bruce must organize a festival (with his ex-lover as the music director, no less) while navigating the world of amateur espionage with his benefactor on one side and the FBI on the other. Meyers (I Remember Caramoor, 2017, etc.) writes in a confident and stylish prose, evoking the setting and time period with concision: “There’s glamour to New York’s early winter dusk, the city’s nerves and energies throbbing as people stride onto the pavements eager to get on with it.” Despite the rather absurd premise (this is not a comedic work), the author’s general disinterest in genre conventions should suck readers in—if only to find out where this is going. Some of the players (the FBI agents, in particular) are quite flat, and the ending comes quickly. Several characters and events would have benefited from a little more fleshing out. Even so, the book is a strange enough brew of elements and authorial choices to leave a distinctive impression.
An intriguing but uneven Red Scare tale.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63492-732-1
Page Count: 87
Publisher: Booklocker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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