Geography is both cure and curse in Parker's second book (after Hello Down There, 1993), a collection of short fiction set in the modern South. His protagonists must often struggle with the burdens of the past as they are tempted by spontaneity, danger, and wanderlust. Their creator follows each tale to its proper length—some are novellas, others stories—attending also to the unique voices of his narrators, who range from an innocent boy taken along on a wild ride to a septuagenarian of some literary pretensions. The latter, in ``As Told To,'' is reading his older brother's memoir of world traveling for the State Department, which brings to the surface more than 50 years of envy and resentment. Parker eschews Faulknerian Sturm und Drang about the agonies of life below the Mason-Dixon line, but he is sensitive to his mostly middle-class characters' ambivalence about staying in the South, as when a North Carolinian ponders what might have happened if he had traveled the world instead of becoming a bail bondsman in ``Commit to Memory.'' He also explores the South's meaning through the eyes of outsiders. In the fine story ``The Little Marine,'' a boy copes with his mother's crazy plans after she leaves his father and joins her lover on a journey south. A long novella, ``Golden Hour,'' brilliantly portrays a clash of races, classes, and cultures through the story of strange conflict among a former ``beach music'' legend, a late '60s radical from California, a rigid do- good teacher from Ohio, and a well-meaning vo-tech administrator. Personal emotions independent of geography are treated as well: A troubled teenager finds a kindred spirit in ``Cursive''; fierce, unrequited passion for his ex-wife compels the narrator of ``Love Wild'' into an unhealthy relationship with her peculiar brother. Honest, graceful prose perfectly matches these stories' sense of place and past.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19682-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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