Broad, cautionary anti-gun SF (sort of a Fahrenheit .451 Caliber); plays best to the already converted.
In Roberts’ dystopian novel, a diplomat in a North America of the far future explores a pariah continent, where descendants of the defunct U.S. concentrate their stern religious faith around firearms and death.
Debut author Roberts’ SF volley against America’s obsession with guns and the Second Amendment happens in the 2600s. Ex–North America is a “backwater where no one goes,” little remembered and unmourned. What’s left are scattered communities with electricity, industry, running water, crops, and trade but no national cohesion or ties to the outside world. The rest of the planet has advanced to a cosmopolitan civilization from which diplomat Ishwar Dhoni, punished for a personal indiscretion, is exiled. He is reassigned to an American coastal fortress maintained by “Earth Administration” in a long-standing quarantine. The narrative—split between Ishwar’s debriefings and the rustic inhabitants of a certain Paradise Valley—informs readers that toxic U.S. gun mania ran riot in the 21st century, with weapons lobbyists and ultraconservatives subverting Congress, stifling the media, and arming militias. School shootings became routine, and armed gangs, flaunting their firepower, raided and robbed until even the U.S. government (relocated to Salt Lake City) fell. Once special commandos of the unified Earth extinguished America’s nuclear arsenal in surgical raids, the rest of humanity shunned the continent. Now its villages worship “Nar,” an Aryan-blond messiah said to have brought guns directly from God in heaven, and random schoolchildren are massacred in a “Shady Hook” festival. Ishwar and a history-minded cohort/lover investigate, among other things, a cult’s murky origins in the family of the last U.S. president, who was named...Heston. That’s one of the few outwardly humorous touches in an otherwise sober narrative that treats the outrageous premise in deadpan The Handmaid’s Tale manner (though Roberts is cheeky enough to include himself as one of the few future academics to comment on the gun-pocalypse). Some juicy targets hit: right-wing populist paranoia and manipulation of history for power’s sake. But repeatedly falling back on a simplistic guns-are-bad theme minus deeper insights into American pathologies makes for a light-caliber attack, much as gun fanaticism well deserves a pistol-whipping.
Broad, cautionary anti-gun SF (sort of a Fahrenheit .451 Caliber); plays best to the already converted.Pub Date: April 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4809-9025-8
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Dorrance Pub Co
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2019
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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