Comforting as cocoa, a heartfelt first novel inspired by the letters and poems of Wright’s own late grandfather.
A grandfather’s legacy to his troubled family.
Harry Whitney has been told that he has Alzheimer’s—and he knows it’s only a matter of time until his mind will go. His two children are grown, and his beloved wife Kathryn died many years ago. Harry spends as much time as he can with his six-year-old granddaughter Emily, whose mother Laura brings her to visit every Friday. His son Bob, a self-absorbed pharmaceutical rep, plans to relocate to San Diego and divorce Laura for no particularly compelling reason. Bob’s just not happy, that’s all. Laura is perplexed. Does anyone besides her care about the old man’s welfare? His daughter Michelle visits only at Christmas: Her husband Greg is controlling and cold, and their children hardly know their grandfather. But Harry soldiers on, working in his garden when he can and writing in secret—poems, letters, advice, mostly to Emily—in a futile effort to stay sane. Still, his behavior changes, the signs of impending derangement all too clear. Then, before his well-meaning family can put him into a nursing home, Harry dies peacefully. Laura and Bob sort through his belongings and find a hand-bound book of poems. The rhymes are odd, but it’s plain that the old man was trying to tell them something. Once they figure out the simple code (usually concerning the first letters of significant words in each poem), they can access his computer files with the password given—and there they find his letters to Emily, filled with homespun anecdotes, heretofore unknown family history, and words of love. Harry also left other clues: there may be treasure hidden somewhere in the house. Greg and Bob rent a metal detector, and the treasure turns out to be infinitely more valuable than anyone expected. Reconciliation, inner peace, and tears of happy joy await all.
Comforting as cocoa, a heartfelt first novel inspired by the letters and poems of Wright’s own late grandfather.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-4446-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.
Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Superb stylist L’Amour returns (End of the Drive, 1997, etc.), albeit posthumously, with ten stories never seen before in book form—and narrated in his usual hard-edged, close-cropped sentences, jutting up from under fierce blue skies. This is the first of four collections of L’Amour material expected from Bantam, edited by his daughter Angelique, featuring an eclectic mix of early historicals and adventure stories set in China, on the high seas, and in the boxing ring, all drawing from the author’s exploits as a carnival barker and from his mysterious and sundry travels. During this period, L’Amour was trying to break away from being a writer only of westerns. Also included is something of an update on Angelique’s progress with her father’s biography: i.e., a stunningly varied list of her father’s acquaintances from around the world whom she’d like to contact for her research. Meanwhile, in the title story here, a missionary’s daughter who crashes in northern Asia during the early years of the Sino-Japanese War is taken captive by a nomadic leader and kept as his wife for 15 years, until his death. When a plane lands, she must choose between taking her teenaged son back to civilization or leaving him alone with the nomads. In “By the Waters of San Tadeo,” set on the southern coast of Chile, Julie Marrat, whose father has just perished, is trapped in San Esteban, a gold field surrounded by impassable mountains, with only one inlet available for anyone’s escape. “Meeting at Falmouth,” a historical, takes place in January 1794 during a dreadful Atlantic storm: “Volleys of rain rattled along the cobblestones like a scattering of broken teeth.” In this a notorious American, unnamed until the last paragraph, helps Talleyrand flee to America. A master storyteller only whets the appetite for his next three volumes.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10963-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
