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The Bad Patriarch |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Robert F. Geary |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 5/1/1995 |
| Size: 1,690 Words, 10,438 Characters |
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EYES OF A CHILD
Richard North Patterson
New York: Knopf, 1995
594 pp., $25.00
Within days of the arrest of the man she loves on charges of killing her abusive husband, the sympathetic female lead of Eyes of a Child receives hefty cash offers for a television miniseries based on the suffering she and her six-year-old daughter continue to endure. For the reader, as for Teresa Peralta, the incident is an example of the predatory, sensational journalism that has spread from the gutter tabloids to infect the media. The irony here, surely unintended, is that Eyes of a Child is itself built on the exploitation of a host of media-approved stereotypes in ways suggesting a ready-made miniseries of the worst sort: the kind that tries to hide its shallowness behind a mask of social seriousness. Unfortunately, such exploitation tends to trivialize explosive issues worthy of more serious attention.
To begin with, we have the venerable cliché of the attractive young woman, fresh from the provinces, meeting and falli...
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...'s seemingly unlimited appetite for high-profile legal combat, real or imagined, it's not surprising that this longish but fast-moving book, exploiting approved crises of the day, is doing well in the bookstores. Nonetheless, I would recommend saving twenty dollars by waiting for the inevitable made-for-television production. This seems the real destination for this facile, evanescent book. vbcrlf
(1,065 of 10,438 characters)
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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