The novel ends on a cliffhanger—all to the good, except it presupposes that the reader will have slogged through to the end...
The president is now not only black but also Jewish, and the tea partiers are having fits.
Well, not quite: Like Sammy Davis Jr., Luke Cooper wasn’t entirely born with those credentials, and the presidential election is still three years off when we meet him. Governor Cooper is one of the youngest state executives in the nation, and, as Goff writes by way of introduction, “widely recognized as a rising national star in the Democratic Party.” His wife Laura—try not to think of General Hospital—hates politics but is willing to support Luke as he follows his bliss, even willing to try to keep up with his sartorial splendor, for Luke knows how to rock an Armani suit. Although he’s been dubbed “the GQ Candidate,” he’s an amateur compared to some of the folks in his moneyed circle, powerful lawyers and hedge-fund managers who broker a dozen deals before breakfast and live lives befitting a Roman emperor. All of these things have political consequences; one of his confidants, for instance, figures in the news from time to time in articles “claiming that he had used his relationship with the governor as leverage for business opportunities,” with said confidant himself proclaiming, “The gov and I are like family. After all he wouldn’t be governor without me so you have nothing to worry about.” It’s anyone’s guess whether the author or the confidant is the one guilty of crimes against the English language, but this novel is flat and uninvolving, its characters shallow; what isn’t transparently borrowed from a certain real-life well-dressed president of color (hey, look, there’s Rahm Emanuel!) drifts by unremarkably. Goff's imagining of an ugly primary campaign in which mud is flung and bedclothes slung could have come from the headlines, too, while the stuff requiring imagination seems an afterthought.
The novel ends on a cliffhanger—all to the good, except it presupposes that the reader will have slogged through to the end of this overlong, unrewarding debut.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5872-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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