bookshelf

HUGO

Name: HUGO
Author: Alfred Shaughnessy
ISBN: 1-873951-12-4

by Alfred Shaughnessy ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1995

bookshelf

Shaughnessy (Dearest Enemy, not reviewed), a writer- producer for television's Upstairs, Downstairs, tells a stiff-upper-lip tale of an English boy, the home he loves, and cruel Destiny's efforts to part them. Stern, undemonstrative Sir Richard Cardwell met Rosemary Mayne, seven months pregnant, during WW I, when he called on her to inform her of her husband's death in action. Although their first meeting was not auspicious, Richard and Rosie fell in love, married, and moved to Charnfield, the Cardwell ancestral estate. There, Rosie's son, Hugo, is raised, but his young life is disrupted by the death of his mother, Richard's remarrying, and the birth of an heir to Charnfield. Eight-year-old Hugo is at first merely jealous of the attention that his baby stepbrother, Jeremy, commands, but he eventually comes to realize that Jeremy poses an even greater threat: He, not Hugo, will inherit Richard's baronetcy and Hugo's beloved Charnfield. And Richard gets along so well with brash and athletic Jeremy, so different from his scholarly and effeminate stepbrother. Relations are strained, especially after Richard catches nine-year-old Hugo and an older school chum in flagrante delicto in Hugo's play hut by the lake. Hugo is sustained, though, by his academic and social successes at Eton and Oxford, and by the mutual admiration between him and his stepmother, Celia, who feels closer to Hugo than to her own son. Richard and Hugo patch things up somewhat when Hugo distinguishes himself in the Army during WW II, but Richard soon dies. Celia remarries and moves to Kenya, and Jeremy—now Sir Jeremy—determines to sell Charnfield. Hugo nearly ends his life from despair, but a timely knock on his door saves him, brings him love, and leads him to find a way to save his home. A little like Howard's End without the skillful plotting and emotional resonance: dry, dusty, and very English.

Pub Date: March 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-873951-12-4

Page Count: 231

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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.).