Exquisite stylist Maso (The Art Lover, 1990) pursues a form for her lushly hysterical phrase-spinning. You read this bisexual/lesbian novel with great sympathy for its fine writing and wait fruitlessly for its beautiful brushstrokes and wispy episodes to come together and grab the back of your neck. Catherine, a young American novelist hanging around the Cìte d'Azur on a writing grant, is waiting to be joined by her lover of ten years when a phone call flattens her dreams. Her lover gives strong reasons why they can't go on: She can no longer be a slave to Catherine's genius, she lists Catherine's crimes, then adds that she's seeing someone else. Catherine's spirit, arched like a Wallace Stevens poem, collapses into a gorgeous puddle. She sits around cafes in Arles and Nice writing in her notebook and becomes known as ``the American woman in the Chinese hat who cries and writes''—and tear by tear goes nuts, drinks too much, and becomes what some readers might think promiscuous. She seduces a 17-year-old artist's model (a very well-done scene), gives herself to a poet, a fascist, a fireman, and is laid by three ticket- scalpers in one night. When she runs into Lucien, a shockingly beautiful, long-haired blond Frenchman drinking ``liquid light'' from a luminous stream of water at an outdoor fountain, all desire focuses on him. They talk, and talk, largely about their favorite films—he is someone who ``stepped out of an unmade film by the dead Truffaut.'' The reader knows this affair is star-crossed even as Catherine sits writing about it, clearly in the same rose- lighted words that Maso herself uses. All voice and no story.
Pub Date: May 2, 1994
ISBN: 1-56478-045-7
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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