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THE ERROR OF OUR WAYS

Name: THE ERROR OF OUR WAYS
Author: David Carkeet
ISBN: 0-8050-4502-3

by David Carkeet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1997

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The sorrows of Job are visited upon a St. Louis nut salesman, with hilarious results, in Carkeet's (The Full Catastrophe, 1990, etc.) wry updating of the biblical tragedy. Ben Hudnut, when we first meet him, seems to have things more or less figured out. Happily married and the father of four daughters, he runs a successful business distributing nuts to most of the retailers in the Midwest and quite a few farther afield. Living in his newly acquired dream house with wife Susan, who writes children's books and tends the kids, there are times when the unreflective Ben sees himself ``as a man who could do everything—raise good kids, run a solid business, and have an affair. He was `larger than life.' But the truth was, he was exactly life-size.'' The true extent of his limitations becomes painfully clear when Ben's secretary absconds with $250,000 of his company's funds, putting him on the brink of bankruptcy overnight. As if this weren't enough, one of his daughters seems to be having an affair with her high-school teacher; the teacher himself attempts to blackmail Ben into silence by intimating that he knows a thing or two about what passed between Ben and another woman a few years back. And Ben's wife, meanwhile, has become the object of rather serious attention from Jeremy Cook, an unemployed linguist married to a bitchy college professor down the block. This convergence of misfortunes succeeds, as such trials invariably will, in revealing Ben's true character to himself for the first time. Long before he manages to make sense of his plight, however, he somehow succeeds in overcoming it—and it is in his response to fate, rather than in his grasp of it, that he shows what he is really made of. Witty, good-natured, and completely convincing: Carkeet has managed, with sympathy and charm, to trace the exceptional adventures of an utterly ordinary man.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-8050-4502-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.