First-novelist and award-winning poet S†enz (Calendar of Dust, 1991, etc.) attempts a big book about race and family, love and death, but fails to rise above melodrama. Diego lives a life of poverty in El Paso, scraping by as a cook at a small bar. The people he works for and with are uncaring, and he has few friends. Not surprisingly, then, Diego feels disconnected from the world, so much so that he regularly revises a long suicide letter. Meanwhile, his sister Helen lives in Palo Alto—a geographic distance from her brother that reflects a rejection of their ethnic background. Given a chance to escape the barrio, Helen took it, and in the process discarded her heritage. She tells people she's Italian and pretends she doesn't understand Spanish. Everyone is fooled, including husband Eddie and best friend Elizabeth, though Helen feels great guilt over her lies and her separation from Diego. At the same time, the people around her are dragging about by their own burdens: Eddie and his brother are haunted by the memory of their father, a sadistic pedophile; Elizabeth also has an abusive father and later discovers that she was given up for adoption by her mother, a Mexican maid; another character has AIDS. On and on it goes, as the bad, bad world batters the pure in heart. Fortunately, though, nearly everyone experiences uplifting (if inauthentic) moments: Helen, for instance, admits her family background to Eddie, who then immediately blurts out how his father sexually abused him—which essentially cures both of their problems. Near the end, Helen (who now answers to Maria Elena, her birth name) and Eddie move to El Paso so she can reunite with Diego. Talky, predictable, and pretentious. A tear-filled confessional Ö la Oprah, with a Hispanic twist. (Author tour)
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-7868-6135-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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