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DESERT BLUES

Name: DESERT BLUES
Author: Bill Albert
ISBN: 1-877946-49-4

by Bill Albert ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 1994

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First fiction that's like the desert in which it's set: flat and stretching for miles without hint of change or oasis. Harold is a flatulent, overweight 16-year-old whose parents die in a car wreck on the Pasadena Freeway. He goes to live in boring Palm Springs with his Aunt Enid, who is too buxom, too painted, and too brassy for his delicate adolescent sensibilities. But she's his only relative—that is, until her deserter father, Harold's long-lost, alcoholic grandfather, Abe, arrives on Enid's doorstep. The crotchety old man's kidneys are failing; he needs a place to die. These travails are complicated by the fact that Enid is a kept woman, and her lover, Archie, doesn't like relatives crowding their nest. All parties collide at Enid's in a comic snarl in which the living terms are hashed out once and for all. Will Archie throw Enid & Co. out? Will Enid throw Abe out? Will Enid relocate Harold? Who cares? The problem here is that the story's central conflict is a tempest in a teapot. The characters are too quirkily affable to do much damage to one another, and we know that Enid and Harold will survive even if they are curbside with only $700 because she's a trouper and he's young and resilient. The author avoids conflict at all costs—Harold narrowly averts being beat up, Enid doesn't plotz that he got drunk, potential romances (for Enid and Harold) dissipate without investigation, and crises are faced with an oy-gevalt, this-is-my-life sense of humor. Interest in some decent comic moments wanes with the realization that the plot is gratuitous, the jokes are central. Everything in this novel is too easy—including the laughs and the leaving of it at the end.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994

ISBN: 1-877946-49-4

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.