A caustically witty novel but one that rarely interrupts its superficiality to deliver a deeper meaning.
Silver (The Summer Invitation, 2014, etc.) tracks the friendship of two college grads attempting to make it in New York.
Why attend Bennington, an elite college in Vermont? “To have something interesting to talk about at cocktail parties on Fifth Avenue,” thinks Pansy Chapin, a moneyed graduate and one of this novel’s minor characters. She’s being facetious, but this comment retains a grain of truth as Silver taps into the particular insular culture that stays with the school's graduates—especially best friends Sylvie Furst and Cassandra Puffin—once they leave. Sylvie, who moves to New York almost immediately, is a self-starter with dreams of her own line of artisanal foods, while Cassandra is assured but unfocused, falling into a administrative job and running through a string of luxuriously rich Harvard boyfriends. After a failed relationship, Cassandra moves into Sylvie’s Fort Greene apartment, and at first their life in the city is exciting as they navigate New York’s Bennington social scene. But the friendship begins to fracture as the two clash on work ethics, views on monogamy, and money. It seems the real world is tearing them apart. There are snippy arguments, then dramatic blowouts—and, when the girls are no longer speaking, a chance meeting years later that shows how starkly New York has changed them both. It’s unclear whether their relationship will ever restart. Silver has written a fun read with lots of snarky humor (Sylvie worries about becoming trapped in a “gray crust of sexlessness”; the girls talk about former classmates: “And anyway, she’s the heiress to the coffee-cake fortune! She could afford to keep the baby”). Although she successfully captures a postgrad subculture, Silver maintains too much narrative distance from her characters. She comments on Cassandra’s and Sylvie’s superficial foibles but never plumbs their full emotional depths; in a relationship-based novel, this may leave readers dissatisfied.
A caustically witty novel but one that rarely interrupts its superficiality to deliver a deeper meaning.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53896-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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