A touching, able, not-too-sentimental look at the ties that bind.
Old friendships and broken dreams in small-town tales of love and betrayal.
Second-novelist Hammond (Going to Bend, 2003) revisits the hardscrabble landscape of coastal Oregon—and ends up in Hubbard, a highway-side township of truckers, used-car salesmen and career waitresses. Her story circles around two long-time residents, high-school friends Anita and Bunny, whose lives have taken somewhat different turns. While Anita, the high-school beauty queen, has married Bob, a lackluster provider who disappears on drinking binges for days on end, Bunny, pregnant in high school, has ended up with Hack, a charming man’s-man who’s supplied her and her daughter with a good home, dental care and a steady income from his job on the used car lot. Yet, as Hammond shows, luck doesn’t always move in one direction. While Anita has always been sure of Bob’s love, Bunny has always had doubts about whether she can keep Hack, a wheeler-dealer who attracts attention wherever he goes, and who now seems to have an eye on the rump of a pretty young thing at work. As the story unfolds, Hammond is deft at balancing the subtle tensions that make for complex characters: It turns out that Bob does love Anita but has also been having an affair with Warren, his childhood friend, on and off for years. And Hack does want to stray but is running from a secret far more serious than any infidelity. Anita and Bunny, whose jealousies run deeply alongside their old friendships, perform a delicate yet careworn dance of balancing their men, each other and the weight of their differently frustrated ambitions. This is, in many ways, a novel about dreams that don’t come true: All of these lives have been dealt raw deals—no one has great expectations, and many have diminished circumstances. Nonetheless, Hammond paints her characters with care, fondness and great dignity.
A touching, able, not-too-sentimental look at the ties that bind.Pub Date: July 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-50944-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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