This amalgamation of “distinctly frivolous” stories lacks a strong selling-point, but you get the feeling early and often...
Wells, a businessman from Middle America, presents his debut collection of short stories.
A financial advisor by day, Wells pens each of his vignettes like a cost-benefit analysis, leaving the now-informed reader to choose: buy in or not. In “Basic Training,” a gawky Wells leaves the halls of the Ivy League for the fields of Louisiana. Knowing he is never to face the trenches of Vietnam, Wells simply struggles to survive an attack from a backwoods ginger giant named “Red” and the scapegoating by an unfriendly drill sergeant. While Wells never loses the candor that earned him these consequences, he develops an apology reflex that absolves him of blame in the stories that follow. Moments like in “Coast to Coast,” however—where his youthful irreverence triumphs—make for deadpan gold: a father-son rescue mission of a baby lamb is celebrated with a lamb dinner. Similarly, Wells abandons his cautious, cumbersome reference to a transgender character as “he/she” for a more reckless, though cringe-worthy, character sketch: “striking from a distance…with a voice like Robert Mitchum’s in a beef commercial.” The reader can’t help but cheer on such humorous interludes once arriving at narratives like “Bowling Green,” which has all the levity of a legal brief. Having ignored the subtextual history of slavery and segregation in this piece, Wells adds the section “Race”—a sort of post-script apology for having painted a Pleasantville with Marges and Earls, Minnies and Charlies and no mention of this substantive theme. Yet again, Wells is forgiven of his grave missteps in stories like “Three Funerals” where the punch-line is a whimsical, albeit purposeless, crafting of a country song. But Wells never has the chance to beg forgiveness for the blunder in his final and namesake story, “Nude Nuns”; in the span of five pages, Wells manages to speak past the foot in his mouth, flagging lesbians by their footwear and defining a hot tub as a “conversation pit with tits.”
This amalgamation of “distinctly frivolous” stories lacks a strong selling-point, but you get the feeling early and often that Wells doesn’t seem to much care whether he makes the sale so long as he gets to make the pitch.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-1450794343
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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