A CUP OF FRIENDSHIP

Name: A CUP OF FRIENDSHIP
Author: Deborah Rodriguez
ISBN: 978-0-345-51475-2

by Deborah Rodriguez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2011

Rodriguez paints a vivid picture of Afghan culture and understands the uncomfortable role Americans play in political...

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Memoirist Rodriguez (Kabul Beauty School, 2007) returns to Afghanistan, this time with a novel about an American woman running a coffee shop in Kabul.

Sunny, 38, came to Afghanistan with her boyfriend Tommy six years ago. He has become a mercenary doing work he can’t talk about. While he’s gone, she runs the Kabul Coffee House with the help of her worker, the philosophical Bashir Hadi, her feisty landlady Halajan and Halajan’s son, Ahmet. Free-thinking Halajan has sent her daughter to the more liberal safety of Germany, has secretly cut her hair short, wears jeans and smokes cigarettes in private, but Ahmet takes a far more conservative approach to the Koran and its teachings. He is particularly suspicious of his mother’s relationship with the tailor Rashif, although both are widowed. In fact, Rashif does pass regular love letters to Halajan, unaware that she cannot read. Then Sunny takes in Yazmina, a young widow who was ripped from her village by men who planned to prostitute her until they realized she was pregnant. Yazmina tries to keep her condition a secret, but both Sunny and Halajan guess the truth and protect her; a pregnant widow could be charged with adultery. Meanwhile, Sunny flirts with her customer Jack, a debonair married American contractor who helps her arrange Wednesday-night speakers to drum up more business. New customers include Candace, an American statesman’s ex-wife raising funds for her new Afghan lover’s orphanage, and Isabel, a British journalist who suspects the orphanage may be a terrorist front. Ahmet finds himself drawn to Yazmina’s beauty and goodness. Sunny and Jack fall in love. Yazmina teaches Halajan to read, and Rashif befriends Ahmet. Candace and Isabel face brutal truths that end in both tragedy and spiritual rebirth.

Rodriguez paints a vivid picture of Afghan culture and understands the uncomfortable role Americans play in political upheavals. But ultimately her cozy sentimentality undercuts the elements of harsh realism, as if Maeve Binchy had written The Kite Runner.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-345-51475-2

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MARGARITA WEDNESDAYS
by Deborah Rodriguez

- BOOK REVIEW
KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL
by Deborah Rodriguez

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

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

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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.