Gwen’s inferiority complex sets up a barrier to reader sympathy, in a tale at times delightfully intractable, though by end...
Cantankerous narrative of a girl in the logging country of the Pacific Northwest who chooses a tough way to deal with the death of her mother.
Gwen’s mother Althea was Columbia’s hairdresser, not well respected after setting aside her musical talent many years before for love of a transient Mexican, Gustavo Perez, who got her pregnant, then left town. His companion, Edgar Fuentes, however, stayed on, and Gwen, the product of her mother’s hapless love match, now 16, has had an affair with the older Edgar and finds herself pregnant—several months after her mother has died in a driving accident. Gwen works at a stable owned by the richest lady in town, Miz Hundy, and she now lives with Miz Hundy’s sister, the kindly and unmarried Mrs. Parker, who has also taken under her wing the recuperating “Leukemia Girl,” Lila Abernathy, in remission after chemotherapy in Portland and now trying to finish high-school in Columbia. Gwen and Lila dislike each other immensely: no-nonsense Gwen perceives Lila as a prettified social climber, while Lila is concerned only with avoiding germs and resurrecting her ballet career. The story is really the portrayal of an attempt at reconciliation—between these two young women of different social classes brought together through hardship, and between the girls and their town’s recognition of their rich individual talents. Second-novelist Koenig (Thumbelina, 1999) writes in Gwen’s hardy vernacular: the teenager is keenly aware of gossip about her mother and her, and is inured to it, yet she lacks the self-confidence to admit any emotional helpers, like the life-by-hard-knocks Miz Hundy; or the hunk at the hatchery, Dennis Bly, who fancies Gwen’s freewheeling ways; or even the dejected Edgar Fuentes, who truly loves her.
Gwen’s inferiority complex sets up a barrier to reader sympathy, in a tale at times delightfully intractable, though by end a hard nut to crack.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-56947-391-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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