MAG-MARJORIE and WON OVER

Name: MAG-MARJORIE and WON OVER
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
ISBN: 0-9655309-4-9

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1999

Though the tales are dated and at a glance have little import for the modern reader, Gilman’s sharp characters and her...

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Two didactic, at times sentimental novels (first serialized in Gilman’s magazine, The Forerunner) still prove fascinating in their explications of gender in turn-of-the-century New England.

A preeminent pioneer of contemporary feminism, tackling in her nonfiction the repressive economic and domestic life of women, Gilman (1860-1935) didn’t stray far at all in her fiction. Written only a few years before the publication of her significant Herland, both Mag-Marjorie and Won Over (1912 and 1913) present women confronted with the challenge of independence in a world of petticoats and social calls. Though the plot of the first is conventionally melodramatic, the solution to its “problem” is pure Gilman. Mag, a 16-year-old maid at her aunt’s inn, falls for Dr. Armstrong, becomes pregnant, and is tossed aside by the misogynistic Lothario. Luckily for Mag, the exceptional Mary Yale is visiting the inn and saves the girl: “He’s not going to be ruined by this summer’s sins – why should you?” The wealthy, unmarried older woman makes plans for Mag’s next ten years – a Henrietta Higgins transforming the country girl into an educated European surgeon. Won Over is more contemporary in its relevance and far more compelling. Stella Widfield, a happily married mother, discovers the emptiness of her life when her sons go off to boarding school. In a nice turn of paranoia à la “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” Stella becomes obsessed with her husband’s safety until she discovers a world outside the stifling environs of her Manhattan apartment. Rediscovering her love of writing (thanks to another well-to-do lady and her broader circle of Socialist bohemians), Stella also discovers herself and in turn reignites her faltering marriage by changing from a frothing handmaid into an individual whom her husband can respect.

Though the tales are dated and at a glance have little import for the modern reader, Gilman’s sharp characters and her insights into gender traps provide enough appeal to interest those outside academic circles.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-9655309-4-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.