Another winner from a writer who, like Lucy Crocker, does many wonderful and clever things with consummate grace and wit.
Preston’s insightful and deliciously funny second novel (after Jackie by Josie, 1997) features a memorable protagonist, the creator of a bestselling computer game, who finds herself ignored by her family and decides to fight back.
Lucy Crocker has felt adrift ever since her recent miscarriage, and she can’t muster the energy to complete a sequel to the popular game, “Maiden's Quest,” that made her husband Ed’s software company rich. Meanwhile, Lucy’s twin sons, 13-yearold Phillip and Benjy, are preoccupied with their own computer business, and Ed seems distracted while Lucy does little more than sleep a lot and daydream about the past. Then Ed fires her, she catches the twins watching porn on the Internet, and she learns that Ingrid, the company’s comely p.r. director, is giving her husband erotic massages. Lucy’s dander is up, and, like the heroine of “Maiden’s Quest,” she takes matters into her own hands. She drives the protesting twins, typical computer geeks, to Camp Kinahwee in Wisconsin’s northern woods, where she herself was once the most outstanding female camper, and then heads to her family’s cottage on a remote lake. The penitent Ed, meanwhile, missing Lucy and his sons, sets out looking for them; the twins embark on a long canoe trip; and Lucy begins illustrating her father’s tales of the north, as well as dallying with her first love, Sam. In the following weeks, all of the Crockers themselves are tested like characters on a quest. Lucy witnesses a crime, Ed learns to row, the twins’ canoe is overturned in a storm. All, however, survive their moral and physical challenges to become wiser, stronger, and ready for new ventures.
Another winner from a writer who, like Lucy Crocker, does many wonderful and clever things with consummate grace and wit. (BookoftheMonth Club/Quality Paperback Club alternate selection)Pub Date: May 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-85449-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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
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