Although Cheever’s parody of suburbia (“Tara-on-Hudson”) and publishing (“Bathos Literary Agency”) can be a tad...
In a topsy-turvy suburbia, the memoir-author (Selling Ben Cheever, 2002) and novelist (Famous After Death, 1999, etc.) visits the sorrows of Job upon a hapless book editor who hires a mysterious nanny who turns out to be his undoing—and salvation.
Recently relocated from Manhattan to Scarborough, New York, editor Stuart Cross and his film critic wife Andie hope the bucolic atmosphere of Westchester will provide them with fewer worries about the well being of their daughters Jane and Ginny, but the early signs are mixed. Although Andie does manage to find a first-rate nanny (an aspiring painter named Louise Washington), she’s uneasy about leaving the girls in the care of hired help—especially now, when the papers are still running headlines about Tillie Cove, the Manhattan nanny who let a 14-month-old baby drown in a bathtub while she chatted on the phone. And Westchester isn’t the Eden it once was: Just down the road in Ossining, a pediatrician was recently killed by a total stranger in a street-corner argument. When Andie comes home early one day to find Louise and the girls missing, she panics and calls the police. Although the mystery is soon solved (they’d gone to the zoo), Andie’s anxiety sets in motion a complicated chain of events that eventually costs Stuart his job. Depressed, angry, and confused, he decides to make a virtue of necessity and revive his writing career by finishing the novel he had always wanted to write. But now that he has the time, Stuart can’t think of a thing to say—while Louise has just sold her first painting to MoMA for $35,000! Is the world entirely devoid of justice, or does God just have a sense of humor? The answer is even stranger than you might guess.
Although Cheever’s parody of suburbia (“Tara-on-Hudson”) and publishing (“Bathos Literary Agency”) can be a tad heavy-handed, this is an immensely funny and sharp account of the vanity of human wishes.Pub Date: July 5, 2004
ISBN: 1-58234-122-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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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