An engaging tale, enhanced by its moody, threatening New Orleans setting.
A rape trial is the unlikely cause of a reunion among three troubled friends.
When Nora’s former college roommate Simone offers to pay for a plane ticket if Nora will meet her in New Orleans for a week of fun, it seems like a good idea. Thirty-seven-year-old Nora has recently separated from her husband, who’s skipped town (one step ahead of the tax men) with his young girlfriend, and she could use a vacation. That’s not, however, exactly what she gets. It turns out that Simone, now a well-known food critic, has summoned Nora and Poppy (the other roommate) to keep her on an even keel while she testifies against the man who raped her a year ago, when she was in town writing a piece on “romantic New Orleans.” This is the first Nora and Poppy have heard about the incident, and as they endure the trial, the three women get reacquainted and struggle with their individual demons. Nora is sympathetic, though too overwhelmed by her own recent troubles to provide unconditional support; Poppy, a wealthy New Orleans native, is now deeply into religion and proposes that Simone’s rape is part of God’s will—and she implies, furthermore, that her friend may be lying. Indeed, Simone’s story starts to unravel during the course of the trial. Thrown into the mix is Leo, an ethics teacher by day and cabbie by night who rescues Nora from a potential mugging and then turns out to be Poppy’s high-school sweetheart. As the trial winds down, Poppy becomes increasingly unhinged (insisting there is a baby buried in the cellar of her ancestral home), and Nora toys with Leo as she comes to terms with her failed marriage. The story’s not high on the narrative-excitement scale, but Hall (Close to Home, 1997, etc.) compensates for that with a convincing depiction of three women at midlife, atoning for past mistakes and tentatively moving forward.
An engaging tale, enhanced by its moody, threatening New Orleans setting.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86319-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
Readers here get both: “Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once.”
A sprawling family saga with a zesty Mexican-American accent from Cisneros, author of, most recently, Woman Hollering Creek (1991).
Every summer, all three Reyes brothers drive with their wives and children from Chicago to Mexico City to visit their parents. Narrator Lala begins with a particularly dreadful trip during which “the Awful Grandmother” reveals a shameful secret from her favorite son’s past to humiliate her detested daughter-in-law. These are Lala’s parents, and Lala then rolls the narrative back, goaded by a scolding second voice whose identity we learn later, to tell us how a desolate, abandoned girl named Soledad became the Awful Grandmother. Soledad comes from a family of shawl-makers, and her most significant possession is a rebozo caramelo, a silk shawl whose striped design, when she unfurls it after her husband’s death, evokes “the past . . . the days to come. All swirling together like the stripes.” Wearing it years later to her parents’ 30th anniversary, Lala brings the fringe to her lips and tastes “cooked pumpkin familiar and comforting and good, reminding me I’m connected to so many people, so many.” Cisneros’ keen eye enlivens descriptions of everything from Chicago’s famed Maxwell Street flea market to Soledad’s sun-stroked house on Destiny Street. (The author riffs playfully throughout on the double meaning of destino, as either “destiny” or “destination”; it’s hard to imagine that the simultaneous Spanish-language edition will be as stylistically original as this casually bilingual text.) Melodrama abounds, and the narrator doesn’t disdain her tale’s links to Mexico’s famed telenovelas. In one of many entertaining footnotes, vehicles for historical and biographical background as well as the author’s opinions, she insists that those TV soap operas merely “[emulat] Mexican life.” The only way to cope is with a robust sense of humor. As Lala’s friend Viva says, “You’re the author of the telenovela of your life. Comedy or tragedy? Choose.”
Readers here get both: “Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once.”Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2002
ISBN: 0-679-43554-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
PERSPECTIVES
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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