bookshelf

IN THE YEAR OF LONG DIVISION

Name: IN THE YEAR OF LONG DIVISION
Author: Dawn Raffel
ISBN: 0-679-41581-5

by Dawn Raffel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 1995

bookshelf

From Redbook's fiction editor, 16 short stories (some of which have appeared in various literary magazines) that coolly explore the human heart in pared-down prose. Most of the tales are set in the Midwest, where the land and the lakes seem as menacing as the relationships within families, marriages, and friendships. Many, including the title story, are about childhood; reflecting today's conventional wisdom, Raffel's children are surrounded by disaster, dysfunction, and despair. In ``We Were Our Age,'' a young girl's friendship with a boy is shadowed by the drowning death of the boy's brother. The narrator of ``The Other R's'' recalls how she, her sister, and their mother became involved with a neighborhood tragedy when a family whose last name also began with R ``had something the matter with their baby.'' In ``Something Is Missing of Yours,'' a young girl caught in the middle of her parent's unhappiness struggles to find a refuge of her own. The most accomplished work is the title story, in which Raffel lets a snowstorm that closes streets and schools become a metaphor for sexual difference as two sisters observe the activities of the boys across the street, who ``were always breaking bones.'' Other notable tales describe a troubled marriage in which a husband bets that his wife will be seduced by a friend (``The Trick''); a confused old woman who goes to visit a doctor at an address a beloved, long-dead friend had once given her (``The Seer''); and two alienated people who head north on a surreal search for a mythical house that offers peace and security (``Nightjars''). The weakest piece in the collection is ``City of Portage,'' a brief, self-consciously metaphorical history of Wisconsin's founding seen through a widow's eyes. Original, clever, and finely wrought, but too minimalist to live. Low-fat lit in need of some nourishment.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 1995

ISBN: 0-679-41581-5

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. COUNEY
by Dawn Raffel

- BOOK REVIEW
CARRYING THE BODY
by Dawn Raffel

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.