Hyde knows how to punch all the emotional hot buttons but neither plot nor characters are believable or original.
Hyde’s newest (Diary of a Witness, 2009, etc.), about two sisters looking for a home after their mother's death, straddles the fence between adult and YA fiction.
After their mother dies in a car crash with her latest live-in boyfriend in New Mexico, 16-year-old Carly is afraid she and her 11-year-old sister, Jen, will end up separated in foster care. The only person approaching family in their lives is previous “step-father” Teddy, who lived with them back in California until her mother accused him of attempting to abuse Jen; Carly is so sure her mother made up her claim as an excuse to leave him for Wade that she refused to talk to her right up until her death. Carly has no address for Teddy, but she sets out with less enthusiastic Jen to find him. After 10 days of walking, they make it to Arizona, where Delores, a 91-year-old elder of the (fictional) Wakapi tribe, catches them trying to steal eggs from her henhouse. Delores makes them work for her for 10 days in supposed retribution while she feeds and houses them. Jen quickly bonds with Delores, whose rough veneer covers a tender heart not unlike Carly’s. Jealous that everyone likes Jen better and hurt that Jen has adapted to life on the farm more easily, Carly redoubles her efforts to find Teddy. When Jen refuses to leave with her this time, Carly sets out on her own, hitching rides and riding the train—in a harrowing display of physical endurance—until she arrives at the seaside town where Teddy has landed with a new girlfriend. Carly, who inhabits a politically correct world in which white rednecks are all evil and all Native Americans are noble upholders of moral goodness, is a familiar literary convention: the spunky innocent who talks tough to hide her vulnerability.
Hyde knows how to punch all the emotional hot buttons but neither plot nor characters are believable or original.Pub Date: April 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-611097979
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Amazon Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
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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