Many of Tyler's principals, introverted, removed, plod around the perimeters of self like patient dray horses, so it's no surprise that her saint here—a Baltimore teen convinced that he caused not only his brother's death but the dire consequences that followed shortly after—is a deliberate and careful saint, laboring conscientiously on the narrow, plainly marked path of a fundamentalist Christian church toward expiation. One terrible night, Ian Bedloe, 19, third child of cheerful Bee and agreeable Doug (one of those Tyler men who say, "Well, now"), blurts out to brother Danny his suspicions about Danny's wife—bright-lipsticked, tiny-faced Lucy, mother of two by a divorced husband and of an infant (by Danny?). Danny, slightly drunk, drives off into a fatal accident; months later, sad and scatty Lucy dies also—after what was probably an accidental close of sleeping pills. Clubbed by the horror of unbearable guilt, Ian is drawn to the storefront Church of the Second Chance, presided over by Reverend Emmett, undoubtedly God's agent—bony, magisterial, discovered later to be affectionately capricious. Reverend Emmett lays out the Way: forget college, provide for and rescue aging parents from the care of Lucy's kids (ages six, three, and baby) and "set things right." Ian "saw that he was beginning from scratch...as low as he could get." Years pass; Ian works as a carpenter leading a life of celibacy and service; kids mature and shape up. Where is that reward? Ian is ripe for a Sign. It comes, of course—as do love and a second chance. As always, Tyler's people—from powerless small children (whose "every waking minute was scary") to the electric, poignant Lucy to the crackly little church group—are as intensely real and yet ultimately unknowable as those who somehow have changed one's life. Less accessible than some of Tyler's others, but on its own terms, perfection.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0449911608
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
A richly detailed and emotionally charged debut.
In his last sermon, the Prophet Muhammad said, "Observe your duty to Allah in respect to the women, and treat them well," but in many Muslim countries, tradition relegates women to subservient roles. Isra Hadid, the heroine of Rum's debut novel, has been reminded of this every day of her life.
Unable to complete school in Palestine, where she grew up, Isra was married off by her parents to American deli owner Adam Ra’ad and sent to Brooklyn, New York, where she was forced to live in the crowded Bay Ridge home of her in-laws, Fareeda and Khaled, and their three other children. Almost immediately tensions erupted, and the newly arrived immigrant found herself on the receiving end of near-daily beatings and verbal abuse. Conditions further worsened after Isra gave birth to four daughters in little more than five years—her lack of sons being evidence, Fareeda claims, of Isra’s deficiency. The situation shifts dramatically, however, after Isra and Adam are killed in an accident, leaving their children to be raised by the Ra’ads. Now, a decade after Isra’s and Adam’s deaths, their oldest child, Deya, age 18, receives a mysterious message from an unidentified source, asking her to travel to a Manhattan bookshop. When she does, an estranged family member reveals some jarring truths about the family’s history. More importantly, the disclosure gives Deya the tools she needs to take charge of her life rather than allowing Fareeda and Khaled to marry her off. In a note accompanying an advance copy of her book, Rum acknowledges that writing her intergenerational saga meant "violating [the] code of silence” and might even bring “shame to [her] community.” Nonetheless, in telling this compelling tale, Rum—who was born in Brooklyn to Palestinian immigrants herself—writes that she hopes readers will be moved “by the strength and power of our women.”
A richly detailed and emotionally charged debut.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 9780-0-62-69976-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Messily executed, but the author’s emotional commitment to her material makes it compelling.
Her many near-fatal mishaps aren’t as deadly as marriage and motherhood for a fiercely independent Italian-American woman in this century-spanning novel.
We know from the scene-setting preface that Mariastella Fortuna’s “eighth almost-death” led to a mysterious hatred for her formerly beloved younger sister, Tina. Debut author Grames, who based the novel largely on her own family’s history, launches it in a stale magic-realist tone that soon gives way to a harder-edged and much more compelling look at women’s lives in a patriarchal society. Born in Calabria in 1920, Stella is given the same name as a sister who died in childhood because her father, Antonio, refused to get a doctor. He heads for America three weeks after the second Stella’s birth and comes home over the next decade only to impregnate his submissive wife, Assunta, three more times. During those years, young Stella’s brushes with death convince her that the ghost of her dead namesake is trying to kill her, but that’s not as frightening as the conviction of everyone around her that a woman's only value is as a wife and mother. Stella has seen enough during her brutal, domineering father’s visits to be sure she never wants to marry. When, after a 10-year absence, Antonio unexpectedly arranges for his family to join him in America in 1939, readers will hope that Stella will find a freer life there. But the expectations for women in their close-knit Italian-American community in Hartford prove to be the same as in Calabria. The pace quickens and the mood darkens in the novel’s final third as it enfolds an ever growing cast of relatives—with quick sketches of the character and destiny of each—and Antonio’s actions grow increasingly monstrous. The rush of events muddies the narrative focus, and the purpose of the epilogue is equally fuzzy. However, a tender final glimpse of elderly Tina conveys once again the strength and hard-won pride of the Fortuna women.
Messily executed, but the author’s emotional commitment to her material makes it compelling.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-286282-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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