A richly textured but slow-moving southern family story from first-novelist Warlick, who, at 23, is the youngest recipient ever of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. After four years of college, financed by the beloved and difficult grandfather she calls ``Punk,'' Mavis Black returns home to South Carolina to be the bookkeeper at Punk's vineyards. Although her college was in a neighboring state, Mavis has not been home in two years. She had a life—and boyfriend—in her college town, but she knows that doesn't completely account for her absence. Returning now, she has much to figure out, including how to find her place again among the people who've always meant everything to her: her reclusive mama; her grandmother, Miss Pauline; Owen, her wild uncle, who's only six years older than Mavis and has always been more like a brother; and, finally and inevitably, Punk, the grand patriarch who's always kept everything going. And plenty is going on, including an extravagant wedding for Mavis's 33-year-old aunt, Hazel, major changes at the vineyard, and Owen's carousing, which results, eventually, in his disappearing from town altogether. Warlick writes evocatively about South Carolina, the vineyards, ``the smell of rotten peaches in the sun,'' and the Edisto River threading its way though the countryside. And—excepting the shadowy Mama—she has created characters of depth and real presence. But for all the plotlines, including the question of Owen's whereabouts and Mavis's on-again, off-again boyfriend Harris, there is nothing that truly carries the story forward. The trouble lies partly in Mavis's narrative habit of telling too much at times while at others—as if coyly—telling not nearly enough. At end, most of the unresolved questions remain unsolved, and, as we'd been kept distant from the heart of things, we're left with glimmers of a powerful story. Like the river: lovely and languid, but just as winding and elusive too. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-395-74177-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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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