CHICAGO

Name: CHICAGO
Author: Brian Doyle
ISBN: 978-1-250-06199-7

by Brian Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2016

The quiet introspection and cleareyed focus on a vibrant and powerful American city makes Doyle’s (Martin Marten, 2015,...

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A nameless college graduate arrives in Chicago at the end of a 1970s summer. In his 15 months there, he grows in maturity and becomes a "storycatcher," a writer of empathy, insight, and passion.

In a magical north-side apartment house near Lake Michigan owned by a quiet Greek heiress and maintained by a reclusive Navy retiree, the young man finds a home and neighbors who become friends. There’s a librettist, a cricket fanatic, a Scots-born tailor who lives with a detective, and an elderly fellow with a foolproof method for betting on horse races. Every soul strides onto the page vivid and distinct, each drawn with clearsighted, open-hearted emotion. Most important, there’s Edward, a dog "of uncertain heritage." Appearing in the narrative seamlessly and with humanlike emotions, thoughts, and behaviors reflected rather than declared, Edward is both dog and metaphor, with a silent wisdom and integrity that keep Doyle’s novel from turning into a Mitch Albom feel-good fantasy. Each morning the young man rides the 5 a.m. Sound Asleep Bus driven by kindly and philosophical Donald B. Morris to a Catholic publication. There he reports for an editor straight off The Front Page. In this perhaps roman à clef, the young man mulls over the mores of street basketball and categorizes the blues as he follows gut-churning electric guitars into obscure Lincoln Avenue bars, cheers the White Sox, aids the apartment house owner’s financial rescue, and, with Edward, tours odd corners and alleys of Chicago. Page follows page of evocative writing as Doyle celebrates "the shopkeepers and cops and nuns and bus drivers and carpenters and teachers who composed the small vibrant villages that collectively were the real Chicago."

The quiet introspection and cleareyed focus on a vibrant and powerful American city makes Doyle’s (Martin Marten, 2015, etc.) paean to Chicago a literary jewel.

Pub Date: March 29, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-250-06199-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.