An overlong yet potentially interesting, albeit modest, tale: like a parody of an overwritten Scooby Doo episode as the evil...
An able if passionless debut offers manners of standard small-town southern fiction—even as the author switches to the small New England town of Strawberry Landing, where a cozy mix of family, history, and unavenged wrongs bump and jiggle together to contrive a moderately diverting tale.
Charles narrates, returning home to Strawberry Landing after some seven years on the road as a travelling magician. His older brother Kevin, for whom everything is life has come easily, has recently been elected mayor and is—bafflingly—engaged to beautiful Emily. Given that Charles fled town those years ago after the death of his childhood friend Gracie, his return offers the chance to make peace with his past—and settle some scores. The first is with Kevin, a big-shouldered cheeseball who stole Gracie’s heart away, impregnated her, then left the aggrieved girl behind. After Gracie’s suicide, Charles was unable to face anyone any longer and hit on the traveling magician idea. Home again, he discovers that Kevin has some nefarious plans to improve the town, among them thieving away old man Hugh’s ancient shipbuilding factory and converting it into a public park. Charles, already with a chip on his shoulder as wide as Main Street, immediately begins uncovering the plot, in the meantime winning Emily’s heart. Along the way, he finds a sassy bartender/bed partner named Wendy, who does little here except perform incidental erotic gymnastics. Though Charles’s voice is apparently intended to show him ironic and bittersweet about his hometown and family, his broad swaths of smarm and attitude grow tiresome, and the sexual interludes are remarkably passionless, as if gotten through with a grim sort of plot duty.
An overlong yet potentially interesting, albeit modest, tale: like a parody of an overwritten Scooby Doo episode as the evil mayor’s plans are foiled by a resourceful outsider, who eventually gets the girl.Pub Date: March 29, 2004
ISBN: 1-929490-25-9
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Frederic C. Beil
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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