A diverse collection of rich and eloquent tales.
These short stories of awkward relationships and crossed destinies take readers to such unusual locations as post-Soviet Russia, the Juilliard School campus, and a state-of-the-art penitentiary.
DePew’s (The Melancholy of Departure, 2013, etc.) collection takes its name from a song in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, which features prominently in the title story. In it, a theater company ventures into Russia shortly after the fall of communism, and they must contend with the shaky environment and its foreboding politics. At the story’s center, Arthur and Irene are close friends and confidants, but their inexplicably platonic relationship becomes strained as uncertainties mount. As they try to explain their artsy gibberish to the cynical Russians they meet, the Western thespians echo the stories’ major motif of artists in crisis. In each of the narratives, a creative professional attempts to reconcile artistic endeavors with the confusion of ordinary life. In “Blind,” Jacob and Miranda are musicians who can’t get their marriage to harmonize; Jacob is too stiff and literal to keep Miranda’s attention, so she prefers the company of a dramatic gossip named Frank. Each story happens in a unique place and time, and the characters endure a variety of burdens, but in each, their desire to be artists is hindered by painful contact with other people. The protagonist of “La Casita,” for example, is a painter who declares, “I have to confess that I’ve sacrificed the sacraments for pigment and linseed oil and scratching away at a surface all day.” The sentiment is beautiful—but then he adds: “And for this I’ve been sent a particular torture: postmodernism.” DePew’s patiently told and beautifully crafted stories are lengthy; three are so long they might be classified as novellas. However, that fact gives the author the space he needs to build two worlds—the artists’ inner lives and the daily existences they struggle with. Overall, they reveal both the turmoil of creativity and the meandering beauty of ordinary human interaction.
A diverse collection of rich and eloquent tales.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990768005
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mixed Messages Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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