Libby, the author of several religious titles (The Forgiveness Book, 2010, etc.), makes his fiction debut with a charming, evocative coming-of-age novel.
In 1947, 16-year-old Cooper Dawkins is a normal American kid with a big problem—his parents are divorcing. Through a teacher at his Long Island high school, Cooper gets a job at a summer hotel in Vermont and considers it a perfect chance to escape. Planning to pass himself off as older and full of the ambition to “become a man, although he wasn’t quite sure what that meant,” Cooper arrives in Vermont and quickly discovers he sticks out like a sore thumb among the college students staffing the hotel (his proudly purchased cigarettes even turn out to be the wrong brand). He flirts with the beautiful Ronnie and the treacherous Sheila and befriends the brassy but true-hearted Rosie, who is proudly Jewish. The casual anti-Semitism Rosie endures, along with the fashions, music and mores, effectively evoke the era, warts and all. Cooper is assigned to the kitchens, presided over by the temperamental German chef Rudy and his long-suffering wife, Gretchen. Between his secret drinking, temper tantrums and vile screeds against Rosie, Rudy makes a memorable villain, though he also shows Cooper great kindness in the kitchen. As the summer wears on, Cooper has to contend with thwarted romance, sexual humiliation, an over-the-top confrontation with Rudy and an urgent summons home from his mother before the season is over. These bitter touches are a wonderful contrast to the frequent doses of nostalgia and give the work a pleasing verisimilitude. The commentary of the hotel’s gossipy laundry ladies is a distracting narrative device, and some of the characterizations of the staff go no deeper than their college affiliations, but these are small missteps. Luckily for readers, Cooper’s remembered summer ends on a high note, drawing to a memorable, satisfying conclusion. Given the potential for sentimentality in this material, restraint turns out to be the most admirable thing about Libby's prose; his matter-of-fact sentences evoke details without bogging down in wistfulness. A truthful, touching coming-of-age novel that will have particular appeal for 1940s buffs and connoisseurs of New England summer-hotel culture.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461194231
Page Count: 275
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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