Torrid Zone:: Seven Stories from the Gulf Coast - Hardcover

Maslow, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679408762 ISBN 13: 9780679408765

Publisher: Random House, 1996

Synopsis

Recognized as one of the best natural historians writing today, Maslow employs his talents as a fiction writer for the first time to assemble this collection of short stories that range in time from the early 16th century to the present. All of them take place along the Gulf Coast, from Tampa, Florida, to the Mexican border.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

s one of the best natural historians writing today, Maslow employs his talents as a fiction writer for the first time to assemble this collection of short stories that range in time from the early 16th century to the present. All of them take place along the Gulf Coast, from Tampa, Florida, to the Mexican border.

Reviews

The discerning eye and lively tongue that naturalist and adventurer Maslow has brought to his well-received nonfiction (Sacred Horses, 1994, etc.) seem enfeebled in his initial foray into fiction. Flitting scattershot across four centuries, this baroque collection whimsically examines exotic geographies and quaint denizens?real and imaginary?of the Gulf shores. Each of the seven stories here depends upon the uninspired use of long monologues, journal entries or personal letters. Maslow's narrators, however, are unexpected, and often winsomely odd. The opening yarn, "The Last Lector," recalling a Depression-era class struggle, is told by an octogenarian leaf-wrapper at a Tampa cigar factory; the next story, a lamenting of libidinous vagaries, is narrated by a professional mermaid at a Weekee Watchee water show. Maslow's other storytellers include the celebrated Seminole warrior Osceola ("Prince Hamlet of the Florida Territory") and Jean Lafitte, the chimerical freebooter who, by his account here, single-handedly enabled Andrew Jackson to deliver New Orleans from the British ("The Journal of Jean Lafitte, Corsair"). The briefest of the tales, "Africatown, Children," reveals the fate of the slaves on the last slave ship to reach America, while "The Healer," set in 1528 and told by a blackamoor slave, offers a tedious parody of Don Quixote. For the most part, these quasi-mythological insights into history, personality and landscape are charmingly imagined, but?with the welcome exception of the closing story, "White Cranes," about the magical adventure of a Vietnam amputee?they suffer from repetitions and pointless peregrinations.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Nature writer and self-confessed ``bird fanatic'' Maslow (Sacred Horses, 1994; Bird of Life, Bird of Death, 1986) turns his focus to fiction in this consistently good, remarkably varied collection. All seven stories are set on the Gulf Coast, but they range in time from the 16th century to the present day. Maslow's ability to create distinct and memorable characters capable of telling their own stories in their own strong voices allows him to tackle a variety of material with equanimity and impact. The opener (and one of the longest of the batch), ``The Last Lector,'' introduces Julieta Suarez, an elderly woman of Cuban ancestry who has been working for decades in a Tampa cigar factory. Julieta tells stories of the old days--focusing on the charming, doomed figure of Cesar Fuentes--to Carmen, a younger, jaded fellow employee. When, at story's end, it's revealed that Carmen has been listening to her Walkman throughout Julieta's rich reminiscing, the reader feels Julieta's dual sense of loss (her past, her connection with the future) with a sharp poignancy. In ``Africatown, Children,'' the voice of matriarch Mama Lulu (``one hundred years if she's a day'') is the beguiling guide; she recounts the origins of Africatown, USA, a place peopled by the descendants of Africans carried on the Clotilde, the last slave ship to ever land on American soil. ``The Healer: Chronicle of a Lost Expedition'' and ``A Mermaid Pining for Her Sailor'' are also narrated by feisty, worldly protagonists; each describes his adventures and life's story with aplomb. Not a tour de force, but (impressively) without a single clunker either; Maslow's gift for detail--perhaps perfected in his work as a naturalist--enables his slice-of-life sketches to add up to a rich and stirring whole. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679408762
• ISBN 13: 9780679408765
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 277