A far-fetched novel with too much going on.
In Ahern’s latest (The Gift, 2009, etc.), a family’s secrets lurk in the ruins of an Irish castle.
Tamara, who is 16 but has always felt older, one day finds herself abruptly evicted from her old life. After her father, George, a mega-rich developer, kills himself in the man cave of his Dublin McMansion, his wife, Jennifer, and Tamara learn that he has lost everything to the global real-estate bubble. They move in with Tamara’s country uncle, Arthur, who lives in the gatehouse of Kilsaney Castle with his high-strung wife, Rosaleen. At the gatehouse, Tamara braces herself for a long summer. Her mother is in a near-catatonic state of grief, rarely leaves her bedroom and sleeps most of the time. Rosaleen, when she’s not cooking gargantuan meals, is discouraging Tamara from doing almost anything, from getting the mail to trying to persuade Jennifer to get out of bed. While exploring near the Castle, which was gutted by a long-ago fire, Tamara meets Sister Ignatius, who keeps bees in a walled garden. Sister Ignatius promises never to lie to Tamara, but she’s oddly circumspect when quizzed about Rosaleen’s eccentricities. Boys help relieve the tedium. Should Tamara tell Marcus, the hunk who drives the Bookmobile, that she’s still jailbait? There's also winsome Weseley, Arthur’s summer helper. Weseley’s father, a doctor, makes a house call to treat Jennifer, but Rosaleen drives him away. At the bungalow across the street, Tamara stumbles on enough blown glass to stock several art fairs, but who is the artist? All this would be perplexing enough for Tamara to puzzle out on her own, but Ahern introduces a superfluous note of paranormal activity: a blank diary that periodically tells Tamara, in her own handwriting, what will happen the next day. The diary chronicles the inevitable and the avoidable: It’s up to Tamara to figure out which is which.
A far-fetched novel with too much going on.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-170630-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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