THE ORDINARY WHITE BOY

Name: THE ORDINARY WHITE BOY
Author: Brock Clarke
ISBN: 0-15-100810-8

by Brock Clarke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2001

An almost charming hero and a vivid sense of small-town life, but the story fails to make a true claim on the reader’s...

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A pallid first novel chronicles a year in the life of a desultory college grad, startled into taking his life seriously by a perhaps racially motivated murder.

Working part-time for his father at the local newspaper in Little Falls, their small upstate New York hometown, aimless 27-year-old Lamar spends his days indifferently rewriting stories from larger papers, lazily typing up community bulletins, and intermittently grieving for his dying mother. He dates Glori, a secretary at the elementary school, but their relationship also lacks focus. Boyhood friend Andrew proposes leaving town to work as guards at the penitentiary, and at about the same time jeweler Mark Ramirez goes missing. While he paid little attention to Mark, the only Puerto Rican student when they were both in high school, Lamar does not consider himself a racist, though he acknowledges the backwardness of Little Falls. The police chief, his father’s cousin, is a xenophobe with a penchant for a little brutality to keep things lively, and another relation is in jail for burning down the home of an African-American family. Lamar takes to the road to escape the ordinariness of his life, goes fishing with Andrew, and sees a migrant worker die. Cathartically changed, he resolves to become a “person of substance” after declining to help the Ramirez family solve the mystery of Mark’s disappearance. He proposes marriage to Glori, who has finally tired of his personal blandness, starts working with gusto at the paper, and in some way recovers his sense of direction. After Ramirez is found to have been murdered by a white man, Lamar decides racism wasn’t the problem after all.

An almost charming hero and a vivid sense of small-town life, but the story fails to make a true claim on the reader’s attention—especially when the painstakingly elaborated racial theme dissolves at the end into vapid irrelevancy.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-15-100810-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?
by Brock Clarke

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THE PRICE OF THE HAIRCUT
by Brock Clarke

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EXLEY
by Brock Clarke

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
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.