An engaging middle-grade tale about the power of love and letting go.
A bird in danger leads a woman to reminisce about the geese she tended as a girl.
In this posthumously published debut middle-grade novel, Coppola introduces readers to Tessie Farrell, an adult who lives in Florida. When she rescues an injured osprey and goes after the boys who harassed and abducted the bird’s relatives, Tessie reawakens memories of her childhood in 1950s upstate New York. At 9 years old, Tessie is sensitive about having been adopted and has an uneasy relationship with most of her classmates, particularly mean girl Sharon Grand. A slow-burning friendship with librarian and ornithologist Maudie Carrol begins to soften Tessie’s sharp edges (“Instead of criticizing or bossing me, she simply explained why things were”), and caring for a pair of abandoned geese finally gives her a sense of purpose. The geese, Wilbur and Orville, are the subject of Tessie’s science project. Taking care of them allows her to excel in a classroom where she often feels overlooked and to understand the motivations of adoptive parents like her own. The story is a quiet one, focused on Tessie’s internal development rather than a dramatic plot. Coppola has a keen eye for the passion of childhood friendships (“I loved and trusted her so much that if she had told me Santa Claus was real, I would have believed in him again”) and the subtle indignities and joys of being 9 (“In place of friends, I had imagination, and I created one-character plays in which I gave energetic and highly emotional performances, lacking only an audience”). Tessie is a prickly and self-contained character, but an endearing one, who allows readers to understand her conflicts and growth in detail. The prose could have benefited from additional editing, particularly the several points at which the first-person narration inadvertently switches to third-person. But there are also simple but elegant turns of phrase (“Spring comes like a shy bride in Upstate New York”) that make for enjoyable reading and a satisfying story.
An engaging middle-grade tale about the power of love and letting go.Pub Date: July 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4990-4915-2
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Page Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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