A quiet, skillful novel about keeping Inuit traditions and family harmony.
A novel about an unusual summer in a changing world.
Hopwood (Gladys & Jack, 2012, etc.) sets her novel in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, on Frobisher Bay. Rosa Mama is an old Inuit woman who’s seen her town change remarkably over her lifetime. (By the story’s end, she’s even outlived two husbands.) But she’s never before seen a summer when the ice in the bay refused to melt. Iqaluit receives supplies of all kinds from the south, but with an unusually cold summer, boats can’t come in, and planes can barely land. This casts the whole town back to a way of life that’s unfamiliar to most residents, and it prompts the Inuit community to turn to its elders to learn how to survive without modern conveniences. Community leaders organize trips to hunt for caribou, musk-ox, hare, ground squirrels and even seals, which Rosa Mama regards as a blessing in the turmoil of the frozen summer. “I smiled,” she says at a town meeting where hunters assemble. “It reminded me of other years in akunahhee—the season of starvation between winter and summer; but this was new. It was a season of starvation between summer and winter.” As the town contends with its unusual summer, more and more people are willing to listen to Rosa Mama and her peers discuss the way life once was. The joy is cut short, however, when Rosa Mama’s husband, Joe, dies in his kayak on a seal-hunting trip. Their grandson, Adam, witnessed the incident, and it’s up to Rosa Mama to hold her family together long enough to learn the truth about what happened. Hopwood’s novel, written from Rosa Mama’s point of view, effectively captures the outlook of an old woman who knows more than people give her credit for and who cares deeply for those around her. The author also makes a point of including details, such as Inuktitut words, that continuously remind readers of the culture in which the story is set. The book is short, but it contains an extended meditation on traditional culture and progress, as well as a portrait of how families manage tragedy and difficult times. Readers who are interested in the lives of modern Inuit people will be intrigued, but the book will appeal to a much broader niche, as well. The love Rosa Mama has for her family and her home is the story’s central thread, and it’s a fulfilling one.
A quiet, skillful novel about keeping Inuit traditions and family harmony.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499077728
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
