Dumb, thin, meretricious, absurd.
A crude debut about youthful marriage and the sad calamities that can befall it—with characters that, at very, very best, fail to earn reader sympathy.
You can see it coming a mile away—that Nick Clifford, successful young broker on the London stock exchange, shouldn’t have upped and married this girl—Trish, she’s called—after so short a courtship. Nick is so head-over-heels that when they’re first apart (Trish is an airline stewardess) he goes around the apartment sniffing the various scents she’s left behind—while she, at the same moment, is banging her brains out with a total stranger who very, very much loves her bum. Well, Trish gets pregnant—by Nick—but, quick as a wink and well before the delivery, her old boyfriend and lover, the crude and ultrasuccessful media-man, Joe, reenters the scene, begs for her hand—and gets it! So Trish and Joe set up household together, while poor paternal Nick watches from the sidelines. When baby-girl Charlotte is born, Nick is smitten like any first daddy, though logistics are complicated now that he’s taken a job in New York and has to jet back and forth over the wide Atlantic to spend sensitive and caring weekends with darling baby. Who really loves who? And what will conceivably come of it all—especially when Trish, though Joe’s sworn and true mate, nevertheless happily bangs away with Nick every time he returns for a London weekend? Nick also has his own stateside sweetie, the gorgeous and flat-flat-flat Sareen (“wow, has she ever come through for him”), who seems conveniently open to any extent of abuse. When Nick and Joe, in a scene stupendously unreal and contrived, are put in the same room together alone, they realize that Trish is banging both—and Trish herself, entering stage left, adds to the subtlety (“Fine, I’m evil. Bitch, cunt, whore. Now fuck off”). After such eloquence, what forgiveness?
Dumb, thin, meretricious, absurd.Pub Date: March 16, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51050-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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
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
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