Midnight Bayou

Welcome to Baltimore, 1966, a quiet Eastern city of row houses, blue-collar neighborhoods, and burgeoning suburbs, a place as yet untouched by the upheavals of 1960's America.

A place where everything is about to change.

What was once so simple now seems complicated. Delicatessens that served delicious slabs of pastrami are now serving sprouts. Song lyrics are angry and raw. Acid is being dropped and the normal life paths梥chool, marriage, a safe career梥eem irrelevant. Or, worse, boring.

Even friendship is more complicated.

As society's shifts begin to take hold, the people at the heart of Sixty-Six know they have something to hold on to: each other . . . Bobby Shine, an intern at the local television station; the soulful and rebellious Neil; Ben Kallin, the "King of the Teenagers"; Turko and Eggy, comic philosophers extraordinaire. They spend their time together hanging out at the Hilltop Diner, wisecracking, coping, falling in and out of love, planning for a glorious future.

As the decade explodes, however, these young people are caught between the staid and traditional values of the fifties, and the confusion, turbulence, and exhilaration of the sixties. As the fighting in Vietnam escalates and the antiwar movement at home reaches fever pitch, their insular world will be rocked by violence and tragedy. As the growing Civil Rights movement sweeps across the country, they will see the best and worst of their parents?generation. And as the hippie movement rockets across the cultural landscape, they will both embrace and be torn apart by the new freedoms afforded them. Together, they will have to confront as bewildering and wrenching a set of transformations as America has ever faced_梐nd each one of them will leave 1966 changed forever.

Barry Levinson has moved us with such superb films as Rain Man, Good Morning, Vietnam, The Natural, and, of course, the much-loved Diner. With the same humor, depth of insight, affection for his characters, and glorious dialogue that make his movies so memorable, Levinson has written a first novel of enormous heart, a book that takes us back to a time in our history when everything was at stake and nothing would ever be the same.

Triple-platinum romance doyenne Roberts spins a tale of bayou passions old and new in her latest romantic suspense novel, set on the grounds of a dilapidated postbellum mansion outside New Orleans. Declan Fitzgerald, a Harvard-educated Boston lawyer, has longed to possess Manet Hall ever since he and his friend, Remy Payne, broke into the old place as drunken students on a lark. Now, on the eve of his wedding, Declan leaves Boston, the law and his fianc‚e, buys the decrepit hall and embarks on a mission to restore it with his own sweat, blood and money. But Manet Hall comes with a dark history, and restoring it means uncovering its past, which includes rape, murder and betrayal. Declan encounters an additional challenge in the person of Cajun beauty and bar owner Lena Simone, who has her own dark history and a surprising connection to Manet Hall. As Declan digs deeper at the Hall, he often hears a baby crying. The cries are followed by voices, particularly that of Abigail Manet, the baby's mother. Abigail's story, which unfolds in 1900, is woven so tightly with Declan's that he finds it difficult to escape her grasp. In the end, only Lena can bring him back from the tragic past that threatens to engulf him. Roberts's role reversal here it is the male character who hears voices and even swoons gives her faithful readers a little extra thrill, and the lush setting and the satisfying if predictable romance round out the package. Literary Guild main selection.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Film director Levinson (Diner; Rain Man; etc.) returns to Baltimore in a rambling debut about high school buddies trying to cope with grown-up life. It's 1966, and narrator Bobby has decided to ditch law school for a low-paying job at the local TV station, much to his girlfriend's dismay. Enigmatic Neil has declined a deferment and is heading to Vietnam. Ben, one-time "King of the Teenagers," is marrying girlfriend Janet because he's losing his hair and Janet's father has offered him a job in the Cadillac showroom. Odd-couple pals Turk and Eggy are 1950s holdovers marveling at organic foods and loose hippie chicks. The boys help each other deal with it all by meeting at the diner to retell stories they've all heard before. Though Ben presents these anecdotes as sidesplitting or life changing, most come across as pretty dull stuff: a kid plays a pinball machine and doesn't win; the zany diner guys drive a car in reverse and hit some trash cans; Bobby makes up a TV traffic report and gets away with it. From these stories Bobby draws conclusions that are as pedestrian as the episodes themselves: "when we're young we understand so little about what we are"; "[l]ike tears, laughter often comes when you least expect it"; and "destiny is what we make it." It's clear that Levinson is shooting for elegy and wisdom, but even though the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement are mined for drama and relevance, readers will find mostly tedium and platitudes.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
"Sixty-six" is a sequel of sorts to the film "Diner," Levinson's hit d閎ut as a director, which dealt with a group of male friends sorting out life and love in 1959 Baltimore. Here, as the title indicates, the setting is seven years later, but that's about the only change. The characters from the movie have been replaced by a nearly identical set who also hang out in a diner, spinning lazy webs of conversation about women, jobs, politics, and football. Bobby Shine, the narrator, has quit law school to work at a local TV station while his buddies variously get drafted, sell cars, and fight over girls. The scenes in the diner are gently funny, and Levinson's evident affection for his characters makes you want to like them, too, but in the end "Sixty-six" resembles its callow narrator, coming up short on energy, depth, and purpose.
Copyright ?2005 The New Yorker