This true and telling novel is optimistic, realistic and sensitively told.
Three siblings balance family dysfunction and love in Olevin’s (The Breath of Juno, 1996) new novel.
Real families don’t function in vacuums, and during every crisis there are a dozen other smaller crises that need to be handled simultaneously—and are usually ignored. When baby sister Florence jumps off a bridge, her brother Peter must temporarily abandon the ferocious pace of his New York brokerage to fly to Seattle and help. Big sister Sara is used to managing Florence—the family division of labor has Peter responsible for their footloose mother—but this latest misadventure, an apparent suicide attempt, may signal an escalation in the family’s problems. Meanwhile, Peter can’t help but notice Sara’s rundown house; post-divorce, she seems resigned to poverty and a solitary life. At the same time, Florence takes note of Peter’s agitation, which the Xanax barely contains and the market crash of 2008 only exacerbates. Told over the course of an eventful year, this drama subtly and accurately examines the ways in which families interact. Alternating among voices, with chapters headed by each narrator’s name, the book reveals the layers of denial and habit that sustain patterns established in childhood. While all three characters come to life, it is Florence, with her delusions, who is the most intriguing. Olevin inhabits her fear—of the “black hoods,” of losing herself—with an artist’s touch, and her short-lived romance with Dennis, another troubled soul, is heartrending. As the cumulative crises break through each character’s reserve, we come to see that each is in crisis, a body in motion. Jarred from their accustomed paths, each takes risks and begins to grow. The resolution isn’t fairy tale perfection and shows how flawed humans may be able to find a fragile peace.
This true and telling novel is optimistic, realistic and sensitively told.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-935052-35-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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