A rich, resonant, and vividly imagined character study.
Schwartz’s second novel traces the contours of one man’s life, or his “journey to spirit,” across seven decades.
As a small child growing up in 1940s and ’50s Newark, New Jersey, Cameron Simmons is so slow to walk and talk that his dad remarks there must be a “tortoise walking around his hair.” The comment, made by a generally aloof father, stays with Cam for the rest of his life—one spent, in part, obtaining multiple degrees at Rutgers University during the ’60s; avoiding the Vietnam War draft to pursue an ultimately underwhelming career in pharmacology; and having a tumultuous series of typically fumbling and often chaste relationships, including an early failed marriage prior to a more long-lasting union. He also raises an adopted son with a tenderness his father never bestowed on him; switches jobs to become, at 6 feet, 5 inches in height, the tallest—if not most successful—eyeglasses salesman in the Eastern United States; and settles down, at a later age, to begin a career as a writer with a modest following on LinkedIn. However, Cam’s figurative tortoise—eternally perched atop his head, wandering and searching, undercutting his day-to-day being with a constant sense of precipice and inadequacy—hampers his joy. Something feels, for him, forever missing, as manifested in myriad suicide attempts. Schwartz ably captures this feeling of absence in confident, cohesive first-person prose, divided into carefully considered and often wry chapters: “All the while, the tortoise was still hanging around, precipitating lapses in my development, confidence, and general sense of where the hell I was going in life.” Cam’s finely detailed and distinctive voice never falters, evoking the protagonists in the works of such authors as John Irving and Mordecai Richler. By straddling the political and the personal—from the Watergate hearings and burgeoning climate protests to Cam’s persistent, often aimless yearnings—the book offers a wide-reaching tale of humanity.
A rich, resonant, and vividly imagined character study.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8218295745
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sullivan, winner of Milkweed's 1996 National Fiction Prize for her fifth novel, this follow-up to The Cape Ann (1988), limns with discerning sympathy the struggle of a young girl to escape the terrible toll of a mother's mental illness. The story is set once again in the small town of Harvester, Minnesota; the time now is the mid-1930s, when Sally Wheeler's mother Stella begins having crying spells. She cries when Sally enters kindergarten, she cries in department stores, she cries over anything remotely sad. By the age of seven, Sally resolves that she will never cry as long as she lives. And while her mother gets worse, sinking farther and farther into a depression blamed on menopause, Sally struggles to live a normal life. Sullivan's insights into a child's desperate need for normality and acceptance give immediacy to her story. Close friends like Lark and Beverly- -characters from The Cape Ann—help, as do adults like Lark's mother Arlene Erhart and the widowed Mrs. Stillman and her shell- shocked son Hillyard. Grandparents are loving and attentive, and so is father Donald, but nothing can compensate Sally for her mother's worsening condition. Stella is eventually hospitalized; Sally and her father become the subjects of local prejudice; and, as Sally moves on to high school, these pressures take their toll: Her grades decline, she begins sleeping with boys, and she becomes involved with pathologically possessive Cole Barnstable. A drama teacher, recognizing her acting ability, helps her find some contentment, but when he dies in an accident, Sally falls apart, retreating into herself and cleaning house obsessively, although good friends do come through. Finally encouraged to realize her talents, Sally writes and stars in the ``The Kingdom of Making Sense,'' a play celebrating a place ``where everything is possible, for sadness rarely lasts beyond an hour.'' A perceptive and refreshingly unsensational account, if at times too slowly paced, of a child's determination to claim and affirm life.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-57131-011-8
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
The symbolism of Mary and child coming to liberate the immigrants may be heavy-handed, and occasionally Hussein’s language...
The first novel in English from one of the most important writers in Urdu, an Indian-born author (The Weary Generations, 1999) virtually unknown in the West. That should change.
The story is narrated alternately by Amir, an illegal immigrant in Birmingham, and by his teenaged daughter Parvin, who, having come to England at five, is struggling between the traditional expectations of her father and her desire to enter into the life of her adopted country. Adding drama are the time-shifts between Amir’s first coming to Birmingham and the present, when he is a legal homeowner but nevertheless engaged in a running battle with his wife and children, who have little idea of his struggles to give them a new and better life. It’s a conflict that brings to mind such writers as Henry Roth and Roth’s vivid images of the Lower East Side, as well as V.S. Naipaul with his tales of Indian immigrants in the Caribbean. But, while Abdullah does not suffer from such comparisons, his novel is unique in its depiction of a particular kind of suffering in what most of us consider a civilized country. Unforgettable, for example, is Amir’s memory of living in a house with eight other Pakistanis and his description of their absolute terror at being discovered by the authorities. One of the men finds a lover named Mary, who gets pregnant and later becomes the catalyst for a violent struggle that will break up the group home and force Amir and the others out on their own. After much difficulty, Amir becomes a British citizen, gets a job at the post office, and buys his own home. His dreams are realized, yet he doesn’t do nearly so well with his wife, daughter or son, all in different ways rejecting their father and the life he has chosen for them.
The symbolism of Mary and child coming to liberate the immigrants may be heavy-handed, and occasionally Hussein’s language can be awkward. But altogether Émigré Journeys is a remarkable performance.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-85242-638-1
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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