This time out, Fowler (Before Women Had Wings, 1996, later an Oprah Winfrey TV movie; etc.) lavishly evokes place and customs, but obvious foreshadowing weakens the intensity of her tale of lonely Mattie, who finds love and meaning when she marries Greek-American Nick. As narrator Mattie begins the story, she’s a widow in her mid-20s still grieving for her husband, Nick, lost at sea while out shrimping. Nick Blue—handsome, strong, and wonderfully romantic—has been the love of her life, the man who rescued her from her quiet, frozen self and taught her how to live and love with passion. Mattie’s father had walked out on his family when Mattie was a girl, and to her embarrassment her mother reacted by flagrantly chasing men. When her mother dies, Mattie, just out of high school, heads to Tallahassee, where she spends her days clerking in a convenience store and her nights reading widely. She meets Nick, a former shrimper, and the two are soon lovers, yet he is unhappy working on the land. Though he’s fearful of the sea, which has claimed so many lives, including that of his father, George, he can—t resist its siren call. He’s also fascinated with the family legend that has Blues metamorphosing into dolphins and returning home to their underwater city. Mattie goes along with Nick when he heads back to Lethe, the north-Florida island home of the Blue family. They marry, and soon Mattie is part of the extended clan, who help one another out, fish, and plant gardens. But Mattie has dropped so many hints about Nick’s demise that when this occurs, the emotional tension, even when ratcheted up by a hurricane, doesn—t transform his death into a box-of-Kleenex event. Luminous prose and beautifully rendered settings, but not enough to give life to this would-be fable of love, loss, and the mysterious workings of the sea and its creatures. (Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection; national reading tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49842-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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