A slow cooker with an unpromising title offers satisfying, intellectual storytelling.
Mendelson proves she has staying power with this subtly drawn second novel.
The author revisits the territory of Morningside Heights (2003): a staid, hyper-professional Columbia University neighborhood of long-married couples and the chronically single. Likable corporate lawyer Peter Frankl and his prickly artist wife Lesley are terribly mismatched, but have endured 30 years together at 444 Riverside Drive for the sake of the children—handsome, happy-go-lucky MBA Louis and sensible, highly intellectual Susan, finishing her doctorate in musicology and already spinsterish though not quite 30. Lesley has essentially harnessed Peter into a moneymaking career and spendthrift lifestyle that are deeply repugnant to him. When she falls into a long coma after a car accident, he feels emotionally released to pursue more academic and artistic pleasures, such as meetings at the dotty, philanthropic Devereaux Foundation, of which he is a member. Manipulative, self-absorbed Lesley’s removal from the family orbit also seems to loosen her offspring’s emotional stays. Susan takes up with a snide, unappreciative Yale playwright she meets at a party thrown by her best friend, journalist Mallory Holmes. Louis, proving his mettle, pursues pretty, intelligent Mallory, whose parents live in the same building as the Frankls. In fact, the whole neighborhood begins to crawl with significant neighbors, such as the creepy, sadistic critic Edmond Lockhart, who invites Peter over for dinner in order to insult him, and timorous, hysterical fellow Devereaux member Hilda Hughes, who develops a poignant crush on Peter that enables her finally to quit a near-lifetime course of psychotherapy. Mendelson effectively narrates Peter’s emotional frustration vis-à-vis his wife, but somewhat derails the story by dabbling in the petty concerns of younger, tertiary characters. However, the author certainly knows her neighborhood, and she has polished an elegant, omniscient prose style modeled on the finest English novelists.
A slow cooker with an unpromising title offers satisfying, intellectual storytelling.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-50837-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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