Next book

WOUNDED ANGELS

A straightforward, engaging tale about finding a meaningful friendship late in life.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

A novel focuses on a grieving widow who finds an unlikely second chance to embrace life.

This tale opens on a memorably stark note: the moment when 14-year-old Maureen Bower’s working-class father leaves their family and commits suicide. In a particularly jarring scene, she’s actually the one who discovers his body hanging from a tree in Highland Park. Naturally enough, the incident scars her psychologically, deepening her fear of abandonment until she meets a confident and high-spirited man named Frank Russo, who asks her to dance at the Cypress Avenue Roller Rink. Frank, a vibrant figure who, a character says, “could never be just another face in the crowd,” brings complicated vigor to Maureen’s life, and a chunk of the novel’s narrative details their relationship. When Frank dies, the wounds of losing her father are reopened, and she withdraws from society. Her unhealthy isolation is shattered by her deepening friendship with an unconventional woman named Doris Cantrell, whose outsized personality has developed as a response to her own psychological traumas while growing up. Doris is abrasive and outspoken, and although she’s kind in her gruff way, she shows little patience for Maureen’s habitual references to her long marriage to Frank and her ongoing bereavement. From the beginning, Maureen senses hidden dimensions in Doris. In direct and largely unadorned prose (that sometimes reads a trifle flat), Miceli (Amanda’s Room, 2012) skillfully charts the deepening of this odd friendship, with Doris and her own familial strife serving to draw Maureen out of a downward spiral that may well have had her following her father’s dark path. Instead of just wallowing in her sorrow, Maureen tries to figure out Doris’ troubled history: “I felt certain that underlying her anger was a deep pool of sadness. What life experiences had ingrained such hostility in my strange new friend?” The fine emotional gradations in the deepening friendship between the two women are smoothly handled and boldly venture into dramatic territory seldom dealt with in contemporary fiction.

A straightforward, engaging tale about finding a meaningful friendship late in life.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-9976986-5-7

Page Count: 268

Publisher: Elm Hill

Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2019

Categories:
Next book

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942

ISBN: 0060652934

Page Count: 53

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943

Categories:
Next book

THE DOVEKEEPERS

Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.

This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of GodThe women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved.  An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.

 

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011

Close Quickview