First behemoth installment (800+ pp.) in a new occult romance by Rice—now moving back into the bougainvillea and the New Orleans Garden District for her steamy new world of southern witchcraft. It's a couple of hundred pages (or more) before Rice hooks the reader and gets her major characters together; the story circles about the Mayfair family (bulking out the book are a few dozen family vignettes) and the generations of Mayfair witches who have accumulated one of the world's great fortunes while awaiting "the thirteenth"—the thirteenth witch in their succession, who will be the doorway by which a supernormal entity enters the human world and takes flesh. Dr. Rowan Mayfair—a San Francisco brain surgeon gifted with second sight, the power to heal (she foretells which cases will live before she lifts her knife), and the power to kill with her mind—was taken at birth from her Mayfair witch mother and raised by an aunt in San Francisco, and never knows until her mother dies that she is to inherit $7.5 billion. Meanwhile, alone and stormbound in her yacht, Rowan rescues a floating body from the sea, a wealthy local architect dead for an hour and being instructed by Mayfair figures in the beyond, and brings him back to life. Michael Curry now finds himself "cursed" with the power of psychometry (extrasensory fingertips) and has to wear gloves to stop the inflow of images. These two are being watched by—and then taken into the confidence of—Aaron Lightnet, a member of the Talamasca, a secret organization that for six centuries has investigated the paranormal. He warns Rowan and Michael against the Mayfair witches. An entity that has yet to achieve flesh has been passing itself through the eldest Mayfair women since the first Mayfair witch was burned at the stake in Holland. Now Rowan is pregnant by Michael, and the entity wants to become her fetus and flesh at last. The entity is by far the liveliest invention in the novel and the reader is left cliffhanging as this rather benign energy-being—fully (and erotically) empowered—is seen running off to Switzerland with Rowan. A writing mishmash, but a strong story stamps itself onto the brain.
Pub Date: Nov. 14, 1990
ISBN: 0345384466
Page Count: 1049
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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