A provocative character study of a —mad housewife— at odds with her family and community is the most interesting feature of this ambitious, flawed third novel from the Montana author of Rima in the Weeds (1991) and One Sweet Quarrel (1994). The story’s narrated by Francesca Woodbridge, a former public relations consultant who takes a vacation from her husband Renton (—Ren—) and teenaged son (Mack), while the former is laboriously recuperating after being shot by an unknown burglar. That’s improbability number one. While in Greece, Francesca leaves her tour group (ostensibly for a private trip to nearby islands); fabricates a new identity; then flies back to the States, holing up in a motel not far from her home, and spends a week in disguise, walking about her neighborhood incognito, observing—unrecognized, except by a neighbor’s dog (improbability number two), until a random stabbing incident blows her cover. McNamer’s shuttling narrative juxtaposes Francesca’s intrigue-laden week with fragmented memories of her girlhood, disappointing marriage (to an attorney who evolved from liberal firebrand to spokesman for polluters and calculating social climber), and affairs (most notably with Yuri, their former Russian gardener, who inevitably becomes a prime suspect for that shooting). Francesca returns to Greece, then back home, as expected—but for a surprising climax in which that intruder’s identity is revealed; a corollary to her unillusioned discovery that —exhilaration has virtually nothing to do with loyalty or kindness and everything to do with the experience of your own powers.— This is a curious novel, with an oddly opaque protagonist who doesn’t really know why she acts as she does. Sometimes that’s arrestingly dramatic; more often, it translates as McNamer’s failure to make her believable. McNamer’s edgy, graveyard-witty, borderline-wisecracking voice has its charms, but this time out it’s largely wasted on a character and a situation that are hard to care about.
Pub Date: June 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-95637-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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
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