Rich with lush language, but perilously lacking plot or tension.
A first US appearance for this 1966 debut novel by Booker Prize–winning Unsworth (Sacred Hunger, 1992), notable primarily for what it promises.
Foley and Moss are partners in a firm that specializes in producing pixies for the tourist trade in a Cornish town called Lanruan. Foley is the artistic one, designing the small figures but hoping to branch out into what he considers the higher realm of cherub lamps and fixtures. Moss supervises production but is mainly valued by Foley for having provided the financing that enabled them to get started. Unsworth provides a brief overview of the business and briefly ushers on- and offstage various eccentric townspeople, but he maintains a tight focus on this odd couple in an unlikely place. The partners live together in a small house, and over time it becomes obvious that Moss is in love with Foley. That’s when things turn awkward. It’s striking that neither partner seems to have had any variety of romantic experience at all—thus Moss's assumptions about his partner's availability seem justified, though they astound Foley. Nevertheless, they live in some kind of domestic tranquility until Foley falls tentatively in love with Gwendoline. Infuriated, Moss responds by aggressively pursuing the gay companion of a local film star. Matters degenerate from there: Moss leaves after destroying what is left of the firm's inventory, Gwendoline marries someone else, and Foley is left wondering what happened to his life. Unfortunately, it all sounds more interesting than it is. Unsworth's prose is wonderful, but the love story does not seem as offbeat as it may have 30 years ago, and in the end quirky characters cannot entirely redeem a brief tale that reads long.
Rich with lush language, but perilously lacking plot or tension.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-32147-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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