Heavy on the self-reproach, this questing first novel is all but defeated by its insistence on the difficult duties of...
Themes of desertion and migration visibly shape a story of family responsibility.
Guilt or abandonment or both afflict almost every member of the large cast in Silver’s first novel as they explore melancholy feelings about their parents or offspring. Will Burton, more sensitive than his twin brother Ethan—although both suffer with the same eye disease—fears he is to blame when his father, Frank, suddenly walks away from his family without saying goodbye. Will’s mother, Caroline, is forced to sell up and move, with the children, back to her parents, Vincent and Eleanor, in California. Eleanor, beset with dementia, seems rarely burdened with deep feeling anymore, but Vincent, who abandoned her for a while, years ago, fears that the wound he inflicted precipitated the disease. Eleanor’s nurse, Amador, has abandoned his own family in Mexico, in an effort to shoulder his financial responsibilities. He, too, carries a burden of sorrow, since his first son died aged one, after a family outing when Amador impulsively dipped him in a chilly river. Subsequently he dares not love his other children as freely, especially his second son, Rogelio, who has always sensed but misunderstood his father’s prickliness. And there’s another forsaken child, 16-year-old Marlene in Ohio, Frank’s love child who, after a sudden, fleeting encounter with him, decides to trek to California, thinking to find him there. Rogelio has also run away from home, eventually appearing in Amador’s trailer, thin and desperate. Amador, who had started an affair with Caroline, realizes he must reunite his family and curtail his emotional absence. Marlene’s arrival surprises no one and engenders kinship with her half-brothers. She understands her father will always elude her, but has found something else. Caroline chooses to share the burden of her mother with her father. Silver (stories: Babe in Paradise, 2001) writes deftly but her overdeterminism squeezes the life out of her characters.
Heavy on the self-reproach, this questing first novel is all but defeated by its insistence on the difficult duties of parent and child.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-393-05823-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
