Luli’s determinedly breezy narrative voice can be grating, but it also generates sympathy.
A small-town teen hits the road and gets more than she bargained for in this raw debut from online writer Portes.
Thirteen-year-old narrator Luli McMullen lies low whenever her sexy, self-dramatizing mother Tammy and charming but shiftless father Nick hit the bottle. Living in a ramshackle farmhouse outside Palmyra, Neb., Luli subsists on sugar sandwiches and special-occasion hams boosted from a nearby Piggly Wiggly. She even endures tongue-kissing by the bartender of the Alibi, where most of Nick’s and Tammy’s nonstop brawling takes place. Finally tiring of Tammy’s infidelities, Nick abandons his family, and Luli follows suit by striking out for Vegas. En route, she hitches a ride with Eddie Kreezer, “a skinny bug-eyed cowboy” with a swayed spine and a menacing air. Craving his attention anyway, Luli calls him names and gets thrown out of his truck. After spending the night in a ditch, she awakens to the sound of a streetwise beauty named Glenda relieving herself. Bound for Wyoming with a stuffed rabbit in tow, Glenda convinces Luli to help her rob a store—too bad her fake fainting fit induces a real stroke in the elderly owner. Next stop: Lusk, where Glenda visits an old flame and a mute boy molests Luli. In Jackson, Glenda reunites with her husband, and Luli re-encounters the baleful Eddie. Tricking Luli into leaving with him, Eddie pimps her out in a barroom bet and then rapes her himself. When Glenda tracks them down at last, Luli has been tied up and repeatedly abused by Eddie for several days in a Nevada cabin. The inevitable showdown offers gore and revelations aplenty about Eddie and Glenda’s history, but Luli finds salvation through the kindly, libertarian cabin owner.
Luli’s determinedly breezy narrative voice can be grating, but it also generates sympathy.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-932961-32-1
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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