Dark, brilliant and disturbing. Let’s hope this first U.S. publication for Chilean novelist Franz will be followed by many...
What happened in a provincial town during the early days of the Pinochet regime.
Twenty years after the coup that toppled Salvador Allende’s government, Laura Larco returns to Pampa Hundida. A young judge there in 1973 when the soldiers rolled in, Laura fled abroad a few months later. Now she has come home to resume her judicial post, carrying in her briefcase a manuscript written in response to her daughter Claudia’s angry question, “Where were you, Mamá, when all those horrible things were taking place in your city?” Born in Berlin, Claudia has come to Chile “to serve justice” and make sure wrongdoers are punished in the restored democracy. But guilt and innocence are not easily defined, we see as Franz interweaves the events that unfold following Laura’s return with her memories of the town’s ordeal in 1973. The brutal Major Cáceres relied on the terrified complicity of Pampa Hundida’s authorities as he executed political prisoners in a camp on the outskirts of town, and he established an unnerving bond with Laura, fearfully attracted to him from the moment she stormed into the church where he was praying to denounce his violations of the law. Past and present narratives build to a joint climax, as Laura learns of the terrible intimacy between a torturer and his victim, as well as the willingness of ordinary people to benefit from evil deeds. Revelations of Cáceres’ crimes threaten to discredit the annual religious fiesta that by 1993 is the primary source of Pampa Hundida’s economic well-being. Wouldn’t it be better, the nervous mayor asks Laura, just to let old wounds heal? By contrast Cáceres, disfigured and half-insane, looks to her to judge him. The course of action she chooses is as unpredictable as everything else in Franz’s superbly plotted novel, which invokes the ancient gods of Chile’s indigenous people, as well as the eternal opposition between humanity’s Apollonian and Dionysian instincts, to remind us that all judgments are partial and compromised.
Dark, brilliant and disturbing. Let’s hope this first U.S. publication for Chilean novelist Franz will be followed by many more.Pub Date: June 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-929701-94-3
Page Count: 375
Publisher: McPherson & Company
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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