A loopy and likable third outing (after War Memorials, 2000, etc.), but insubstantial and unconvincing.
A phlegmatic Alabaman innocent encounters illogic, mendacity, and lethal ambition.
Taylor Wakefield’s troubles (related in his meandering nonsequential narrative) begin in 1963 when, aged 11, he inadvertently witnesses the murder of a black saloonkeeper by his sociopathic adult cousin Billy Hatcher (“the most dangerous limb on the family tree”), and is frightened into silence. Years pass (looping around one another, in Taylor’s remembering), and Our Hero reaches the finals of the National Spelling Bee, losing to his cute female opponent, turns failure to brief fame on a tacky phone-in quiz show, survives his parents’ marital breakup, and drifts. The plot gathers shape when Taylor is hired as a (totally unqualified) weatherman by Montgomery-based radio-TV network Alacast (“a bottom-feeding news operation known for its gross inaccuracies and its growing number of pending lawsuits”). McCown’s summary of Taylor’s embattled adjustment to a bewildering multiplicity of tasks at understaffed Alacast is sitcom stuff. But things darken and grow more interesting when Taylor uses his “forum” as meteorologist-commentator to utter cryptic warnings about the political rise of aforementioned Cousin Billy, who’s been born again, reconstructed himself as an assistant attorney general, and is now reopening the case of the 15-year-old murder he himself committed. The resulting battle of wits steamrolls when Taylor reconnects with former Spelling Bee foe Alissa Powell, now a novice nun burdened by anger-management issues—and climaxes in a problem-solving confrontation with endlessly resourceful and duplicitous Cousin Billy. The Weatherman lives and dies by Taylor’s agreeably wry voice. There’s a little of Walker Percy’s self-deprecating Binx Bolling (of The Moviegoer) in him—though not enough to compensate for this story’s numerous improbabilities.
A loopy and likable third outing (after War Memorials, 2000, etc.), but insubstantial and unconvincing.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-55597-405-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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