TINY LADIES

Name: TINY LADIES
Author: Adam Klein
ISBN: 1-85242-404-4

by Adam Klein ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2003

A bold and worthwhile attempt. But one wonders whether Klein’s very real gift for compacted intensity is better suited to...

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A social worker struggles to improve both her clients’ lives and her own half-buried one, in an intriguingly fragmented debut by the musician and storyteller (The Medicine Burns, 1995).

In its opening pages, Klein’s narrator Carrie details her experiences as a caseworker in Iowa City, whence she has recently moved from California—and, as staggered flashbacks reveal, a dangerous relationship with client Victor Hernandez Lopez, a charismatic heroin-addicted ex-con. Carrie’s compulsive “attraction to doomed and stunted things” is similarly shown to be rooted in her past; specifically, in severed relationships with her career criminal father, a hopeless recidivist, and her recently deceased manic-depressive mother. In Iowa City, Carrie finds herself bonding with new client Hannah Fisher, a withdrawn young woman burdened with a history of bad choices and lethal violence that almost exactly mirrors Carrie’s. As the two realize how alike they are, they grow closer, and, in a rather feverish dénouement, exorcise their separate demons, and experience an exchange of identities. Much of Tiny Ladies—which reads like a bizarre combination of Dostoevsky, Jim Thompson, and Robert Altman—is over the top, and it’s hard to stay with Klein’s irretrievably downbeat characters. But the writing is often brutally exquisite. Carrie’s numbed despair is very skillfully rendered, and the gradually accreting structure of the numerous flashback scenes (particularly those that reveal Carrie’s conflicted, incipiently incestuous feelings toward her father) carry an impressive raw emotional charge. There’s just simply too much of everything: sex, drugs, guilt, alienation, regret, anomie.

A bold and worthwhile attempt. But one wonders whether Klein’s very real gift for compacted intensity is better suited to the short-story form.

Pub Date: May 22, 2003

ISBN: 1-85242-404-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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.).