A lovingly constructed, engrossing novel about an African-American family and hamlet.
Ross tells the story of a woman searching for peace in a threatened black community in the Hudson Valley.
Raised in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Baltimore, Bibsy arrives in New York to live with her sister and experience the Harlem nightlife of the 1950s. Her path takes an unexpected turn, however, after a chance encounter with Jake Tucker, a boisterous, light-skinned widower from a rural bend in the Hudson River who has come down to the city to get drunk and meet women. The two hit it off, and Bibsy returns with Jake to the Beach, his small outpost of black America in upstate New York, where he and his family subsist on hunting animals and growing vegetables. Adjusting to rural life takes some getting used to, particularly for Bibsy, who is trailed by her own unwelcome memories of childhood and familial complications. And yet country living seems liberating, far away from the expectations of urban life: “Jake’s place was so unkempt he couldn’t have made a worse mess on purpose,” she observes upon first reaching the Beach. “Everywhere else she’d lived had been very orderly and spotless; and she’d been expected to help keep it that way.” Their paradise becomes endangered, however, by plans to extend the state’s road system with a new bridge, and their quiet hamlet may be swallowed up by the encroaching threat of suburbanization. Ross is an infinitely humane writer, and her characters in this debut novel burst with humor and warmth. The love story of Jake and Bibsy remains endearing despite their flaws: it has the lived-in weight of a real love affair, not simply a literary creation. Bibsy’s back story, delivered piecemeal over the course of the book, provides just enough mystery to keep the reader hooked, but the true achievement is the revelation of small-town life among African-Americans in the middle of the last century. Readers are extremely familiar with depictions of Harlem, but the fictional Langston County provides a seldom-seen glimpse into a real piece of New York history, one that subsequent human migrations have erased from the map.
A lovingly constructed, engrossing novel about an African-American family and hamlet.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4969-6589-9
Page Count: 386
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.
Devastated by her mother’s death, Brett Bohlinger consumes a bottle of outrageously expensive Champagne and trips down the stairs at the funeral luncheon. Add embarrassed to devastated. Could things get any worse? Of course they can, and they do—at the reading of the will.
Instead of inheriting the position of CEO at the family’s cosmetics firm—a position she has been groomed for—she’s given a life list she wrote when she was 14 and an ultimatum: Complete the goals, or lose her inheritance. Luckily, her mother, Elizabeth, has crossed off some of the more whimsical goals, including running with the bulls—too risky! Having a child, buying a horse, building a relationship with her (dead) father, however, all remain. Brad, the handsome attorney charged with making sure Brett achieves her goals, doles out a letter from her mother with each success. Warmly comforting, Elizabeth’s letters uncannily—and quite humorously—predict Brett’s side of the conversations. Brett grudgingly begins by performing at a local comedy club, an experience that proves both humiliating and instructive: Perfection is overrated, and taking risks is exhilarating. Becoming an awesome teacher, however, seems impossible given her utter lack of classroom management skills. Teaching homebound children offers surprising rewards, though. Along Brett’s journey, many of the friends (and family) she thought would support her instead betray her. Luckily, Brett’s new life is populated with quirky, sharply drawn characters, including a pregnant high school student living in a homeless shelter, a psychiatrist with plenty of time to chat about troubled children, and one of her mother’s dearest, most secret companions. A 10-step program for the grief-stricken, Brett’s quest brings her back to love, the best inheritance of all.
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-54087-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Twenty New England horror shorts by Stephen King (and a painfully lofty introduction by old pro John D. MacDonald). King, of course, is the 30-year-old zillionaire who poured the pig's blood on Carrie, woke the living dead in 'Salem's Lot, and gave a bad name to precognition in The Shining. The present collection rounds up his magazine pieces, mainly from Cavalier, and also offers nine stories not previously published. He is as effective in the horror vignette as in the novel. His big opening tale, "Jerusalem's Lot"—about a deserted village—is obviously his first shot at 'Salem's Lot and, in its dependence on a gigantic worm out of Poe and Lovecraft, it misses the novel's gorged frenzy of Vampireville. But most of the other tales go straight through you like rats' fangs. "Graveyard Shift" is about cleaning out a long unused factory basement that has a subbasement—a hideous colony of fat giant blind legless rats that are mutating into bats. It's a story you may wish you hadn't read. You'll enjoy the laundry mangle that becomes possessed and begins pressing people into bedsheets (don't think about that too much), a flu bug that destroys mankind and leaves only a beach blanket party of teenagers ("Night Surf"), and a beautiful lady vampire and her seven-year-old daughter abroad in a Maine blizzard ("One for the Road"). Bizarre dripperies, straight out of Tales from the Crypt comics. . . a leprous distillation.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1977
ISBN: 0385129912
Page Count: 367
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1977
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot” to Be Epix Show
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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