Maxted amiably delivers what’s expected.
Two London sisters hash out their troubles in this fourth novel from Maxted (Behaving Like Adults, 2003, etc.), champion of issue-orientated chick-lit.
She’s covered anorexia and date rape; now Maxted turns her attention to babies—wanting them, adopting them, losing them by miscarriage. Though Cassie and Lizbet are as close as can be, they couldn’t be more different. Younger Cassie is a high-powered barrister with a sense of entitlement that would be infuriating if she didn’t work so hard (for those lovely clothes, the Merc, the posh house) and charm so well. Lizbet is of more relaxed, with a messy house that she and boyfriend Tim cannot afford, an admittedly silly job at the soft-core Ladz magazine and a general desire to please, and to be pleased by everything bright and yummy. When Lizbet finds she is pregnant, she’s horrified, then delighted. When the couple breaks the news at Friday Sabbath dinner, all are pleased but Cassie, who wavers between avoidance and seething rage. Unbeknownst to the family, Cassie and husband George (a loser mama’s boy if ever there was one) have been trying to conceive for a year. Cassie reveals even more heartache—at 13, her parents revealed that she was adopted. The three kept it a secret, but Cassie has lately been searching for her birth mother, who recently died. Soon Cassie’s jealousy becomes a moot point—Lizbet has a miscarriage and her life begins to fall apart. Lizbet discovers a taste for alcohol (“Jews don’t drink, its ridiculous!” warns her icy mother), then Lizbet forces perfect Tim out of her life. And she loses her job. Cass has it only slightly better—she’s pregnant, but just as she’s decided to divorce George, he wants to sue her for custody. The sister’s problems with their partners, their parents and all things related to babies are trotted out with good humor, genuine emotion and, unfortunately, oversimplification. But it’s the nature of this particular beast.
Maxted amiably delivers what’s expected.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-94973-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
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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