Static. Gracefully written, but, after the first few chapters, nothing builds until the uplifting (and unearned) close.
Shapiro (the memoir Slow Motion, 1998; Picturing the Wreck, 1996, etc.) returns with a “poor me” novel about a woman whose perfect family has disintegrated before her eyes.
Rachel, the classic (and classically annoying) victim-heroine, is constantly resentful—her mother, her friends, her children, her husband have all disappointed her. Husband Ned has moved out of the house, toddler Josh may have developmental problems, and daughter Kate is in a boarding facility for troubled teenagers, where she’s just picked a fight with another girl. Despondent, Rachel looks back over her life with Ned. They fell in love in New York, where she was a grad student and he an aspiring artist. When she became unexpectedly pregnant, they married and moved back to Massachusetts, into a house his parents helped him buy; he took a job as a teacher and they doted on their daughter until the summer 13-year-old Kate returned from camp no longer their sunny, athletic, loving daughter, but a sullen tattooed and pierced adolescent (camps allow tattooing and piercing these days?). The incidents Rachel recalls—rudeness, shoplifting—could describe any teenager, but Rachel sensed that Kate’s problems were deeper, even though Kate seemed to rally after she learned Rachel was pregnant. But after unexpected complications kept Kate out of the birthing room, she began a downward emotional spiral that was exacerbated when she accidentally dropped seven-month-old Josh. Soon, she told her psychiatrist that Ned had sexually molested her. No one believed Kate, who’d also begun cutting herself, but Ned lost his job and took up selling real estate for his decent if insensitive parents. Rachel describes her own mother as evil and deranged, although her behavior seems no worse than that of most aging, neurotic mothers. Rachel and Ned visit Kate’s school, and after the girl acknowledges she did a terrible thing, the family joins in a group hug.
Static. Gracefully written, but, after the first few chapters, nothing builds until the uplifting (and unearned) close.Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-41547-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
