No escapism here.
A corporate attorney leaves her Manhattan cubicle for a small New Hampshire town, where she faces an agonizing choice.
Emily’s enervating job at a prestigious law firm is only a higher-paying version of a hectic call center. She sees little of her husband, James, who is immersed in his own 12-hour-a-day struggle to make partner in a similar firm. The couple is too exhausted to enjoy the spoils of their labors assisting corporations to further crush the poor and downtrodden. Their love life is strictly scheduled around Emily’s fertile periods, to no avail, baby-wise. One day Emily just snaps, runs out on her life and heads for the last place she remembers feeling relaxed: Bell Valley, where her college roommate’s family runs a massive animal shelter, the Refuge. Nothing much has changed in Bell Valley when Emily arrives, other than the fact that her one-time roomie, Vicki, now owns the Red Fox, a B&B. Vicki’s brother, Jude, Emily’s first love, has been absent for a decade, traveling the world. Emily fled Bell Valley, she thought forever, when Jude broke up with her and impregnated his ex-girlfriend. Emily has received sporadic dispatches from Jude, the last from a crab boat in the Bering Sea. His dreaded return to Bell Valley, accompanied by the coyote that appears to be his spirit guide (and rapidly becomes Emily’s), once again discomfits feminine hearts, including Vicki’s—she resents Jude for being the prodigal son family matriarch Amelia welcomes home while taking vineyard-toiling Vicki for granted. James, stunned by Emily’s defection, is trying to woo her back, but not quite ready to abandon Manhattan. Emily finds contentment in working with rescue cats and pitting her legal skills against power and greed (for a change). An improbable subplot involving Red Fox employee Lee, defrauded of her inheritance, is intended to inject thrills but falls far short of replacing the more essential conflicts Delinsky simply ducks. Arid stretches of boredom ensue.
No escapism here.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53272-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
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
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
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