Brisk, fun, and good-natured.
Winning debut describes a young girl coming of age during the 1960s.
Twelve-year-old Lizzy McMann and her mother get a real kick in the head when Veronica’s husband Manny announces that he’s leaving them for a hatcheck girl. To add insult to injury, Manny tells the desk clerk at the Phoenix hotel the McManns have been living in that their room will be vacated the next day, so Lizzy and Veronica must find a new home as well as a new breadwinner. With nowhere else to turn, they move in with Veronica’s parents in upstate New York. There, in her mother’s childhood home, Lizzie discovers a cache of old letters that makes one thing clear: Manny was not her father. While piecing together the mystery of her origins, she manages to settle fairly well into her new surroundings, making friends with Eva Singer, a local physician’s daughter who soon becomes her closest confidante . . . in most things. For, in addition to the usual adolescent traumas of acne and menstruation, Lizzy seems to have suffered the indignity of falling in love with Eva. Is this just another spasm of growing pains, or a glimmer of some new light on her life’s horizon? Whatever the case may be, it is not Lizzy’s only concern. Her mother appears to be on the verge of breaking up with a charming new boyfriend—to go back to Manny! If your own mother can’t manage her life, what hope is there for you? That is how it looks to the teenaged Lizzy, who has yet to learn that most adults spend their lives repeating the mistakes they began as children. “If she were a dog, her ears would be down and her tail would be tucked between her legs,” comments the narrator of this amusing tale notable for its sharp and quick-witted tone.
Brisk, fun, and good-natured.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-89733-511-2
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Academy Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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