Underplotted, but with the fast pace, you scarcely notice: another small gem from Edgerton (Where Trouble Sleeps, 1997,...
For sheer likability it’d be hard to beat Edgerton’s affectionate portraits of small-town oddballs in the South. His eighth outing is a breezy comedy, tinged with sadness.
Carl Turnage is a mild-mannered, thoroughly decent guy, but not a commanding presence in his North Carolina town; if only he were a little taller, his voice a little deeper. A middle-aged bachelor, he was raised by his mother and her two sisters; the sole survivor is his aunt Lil, now at Rosehaven nursing home and shrinking fast, though still an occasional driver, and that’s a problem. Carl (he and Aunt Lil are real close) is bracing himself to tell her she must stop, just as we brace for more old-folks-behind-the-wheel jokes; but they still have some real zip in this go-round, shot through by the old folks’ somber awareness that their final spin may be the beginning of the end. The other principal here is L. Ray Flowers, a flamboyant if loopy former evangelist whose sermons might begin with your feet (“Don’t be afraid to buy expensive shoes”). He went through a bad patch when a woman he was “healing” fell off the stage and killed herself, and now he has a cockamamie scheme to combine churches and nursing-homes, but so what? He gets Carl back to writing country songs (their gig together is Carl’s dream come true), and he sure perks up all the old ladies; the exception is Darla Avery, who remembers their nightmare date 40 years ago, when L. Ray masturbated in the car after the eighth-grade dance. This is all the ammunition Rosehaven’s hard-nosed owner needs to have L. Ray, an obvious troublemaker, evicted. Meanwhile, Aunt Lil has started “sundowning” (“They get confused after the sun goes down,” explains the nurse). There can be no happy ending here, but even a stroke and a death are handled with a light touch.
Underplotted, but with the fast pace, you scarcely notice: another small gem from Edgerton (Where Trouble Sleeps, 1997, etc.).Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2003
ISBN: 1-56512-195-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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