Thoroughly likable debut fiction (the first of a trilogy), narrated in an old-fashioned leisurely style with enough...
A first novel by Mendelson (Home Comforts, not reviewed) follows the intersecting fortunes of a group of friends and neighbors who live in an enclave of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Morningside Heights is one of those pleasant, dull neighborhoods that used to be common in New York. Built largely as a preserve for the well-to-do, it began a long decline during the Depression and for many decades muddled along with a kind of seedy sophistication that was typical in the pre-Guiliani era. When Anne and Charles Braithwaite moved to the Heights in the early ’80s it was a great place to live: adjacent to Columbia University, inexpensive but richly endowed with good schools, bookstores, churches, and parks. Charles was a singer at the Metropolitan Opera, Anne a concert pianist who had stopped performing to devote herself to their three children. By the late ’90s, however, soaring real estate prices had changed the character of the place as families and retirees could no longer afford the rents. When Anne discovers she’s pregnant again, she and Charles reluctantly decide to look for a bigger place in the suburbs—but just then they learn that Anne has been named primary beneficiary in the will of the late Elizabeth Miller, who had lived across the hall from them. Elizabeth, 103 when she died, had never married and for more than 20 years had placed all her business affairs in the hands of Eugene Becker, a shady lawyer who claims that Elizabeth was essentially bankrupt and that at any rate she had made a later will in his favor. Anne and Charles are willing to let the matter pass, but they can’t help wondering: If Elizabeth was truly broke, why did Becker go to the bother of drawing up a new will for her?
Thoroughly likable debut fiction (the first of a trilogy), narrated in an old-fashioned leisurely style with enough subplots, mysteries, and denouements to keep any reader engaged for the duration.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50836-8
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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
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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