A gripping and remarkably fine first collection of 11 stories, mapping the changing moral byways of a dying New England mill-town and angling inside the lives of the town's often warring Irish, Italian, Wasp, and newer Puerto Rican inhabitants. In ``The First Snow,'' a contemporary 17-year-old son sticks by his father—a weak, overweight, Waspy Lawton Falls junior-high teacher who has just been arrested for homosexual conduct at a highway rest-stop—even though his mother and brother have fled in horror and he is repelled, too. In ``The Miracle,'' a devoted priest called Father D'Agostino, whose parish is the poorest in Lawton Falls in the 1960's, hesitantly asks a local gangster named Davio Giaccalone for help in saving the church from demolition; a fire is set elsewhere, the church is preserved, but a homeless man dies, and D'Agostino is undone by moral pain. In ``Violet'' and ``All Best Wishes,'' contemporary town yuppies face revealing romantic crises; and in ``The Greyhounds,'' two insouciant young computer programmers from out of town steal an aging Davio Giaccalone's beloved greyhound dog—a mistake, as it turns out, since Giaccalone is still dangerous. The violence turns explicit in the ``Brothers,'' about the gang rape of a Puerto Rican girl by three Irish and Italian garage mechanics in the 1970's. The girl, Maria Mendez, is seen again in ``The Birthday Cake,'' in which an old Italian woman refuses to give up the last cake in a neighborhood bakery for Maria's daughter's birthday party. Davio Giaccalone is definitively betrayed in the elegant, almost classic ``The Last Good Man'': while maneuvering to keep the town's last mill from being closed by the Japanese, he entrusts crucial information to a newspaper reporter who, however, has resolved to learn to look out for himself. There's more—all of it rich in detail and theme.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-87023-865-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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