A WILD RIDE UP THE CUPBOARDS

Name: A WILD RIDE UP THE CUPBOARDS
Author: Ann Bauer
ISBN: 0-7432-6949-7

by Ann Bauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2005

Though without easy or pat explanations, Bauer’s world is rich in the often wrong-headed but always well-meaning choices her...

bookshelf

A spare, demanding addition to the burgeoning genre that traces how a “problem” child destroys his well-meaning parents’ lives together.

Around age four, Edward stops talking and, except for occasional brief relapses into near normalcy, shows many symptoms of autism, although the specialists decide he is not specifically autistic. Edward’s mother, Rachel, and father, Jack, are distraught. Jack folds his failing construction business and the family moves back to Minneapolis, where Rachel’s parents live. Jack takes a job as a cop, and Rachel works part-time for a newspaper. Their younger son, Matt, shows signs of great intelligence, but Edward remains mute and painfully sleepless. Then, during a tonsillectomy, he sleeps while he’s anaesthetized and later is given codeine. Finally rested, he begins to behave more normally, but once the codeine wears off, he reverts to his usual zombie state. Desperate to find a way to help him sleep, Rachel persuades Jack to procure some marijuana, which they serve Edward as tea, but, when it doesn’t work, they stop. Their third child, Grace, is born around the same time that Rachel discovers that melatonin may help Edward sleep. Edward learns to write, and, just when their lives seem on track, Jack is fired for having bought the marijuana for Edward. After disappearing on a binge, he returns to take a job as a bank guard, and family life gets back on track. Jack proves himself gifted at working with Edward, and all the children thrive. But Edward tells a social worker about the old “tea” incident and Jack, charged with child abuse, disappears. What binds and tears the couple apart is that Rachel is driven to cure Edward at whatever cost, while Jack is willing to pay that cost.

Though without easy or pat explanations, Bauer’s world is rich in the often wrong-headed but always well-meaning choices her characters, like real people, make daily. An impressive debut.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2005

ISBN: 0-7432-6949-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
FORGIVENESS 4 YOU
by Ann Bauer

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOREVER MARRIAGE
by Ann Bauer

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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.