A fresh take on forbidden love and forgiveness with warm, winning characters.
Gormly’s enjoyable debut novel explores the political, religious and social dynamics of rural life in fictional Tysen, Mo., during the summer of 1950.
Naomi Hollister’s husband, Russell, disappeared 12 years ago, leaving her a $1,000 check, his orphaned, 5-year-old nephew, Johnny, and the large house he grew up in. To survive and provide for Johnny, Naomi opened a small hotel, which gave her the ability to send Johnny to Missouri University in the fall. It also introduced her to Matt Neyerson, a sturdy and dependable boarder who knows “when to put down the newspaper.” Busby Howard, the local reverend, spews “hellfire and sparks” from the pulpit of the Baptist church, denouncing Johnny and Naomi for their association with Ray Redeem, a misunderstood troublemaker with plans to marry Alice Tolney, despite the previous arrangements Alice’s father made with wealthy Sample Forney. Howard’s proclamations spark a divide within the church and, ultimately, the entire town. Re-enter Russell, once “all splash and dance,” now sick with cancer and guilt, ready to share the truth about his desertion. Gormly’s multilayered narrative avoids melodrama and flows with ease, using the sights and sounds of an unfolding summer to allow the action to bloom. Precise period details and colloquialisms evoke an era of multiparty telephone lines, railroad travel and pie auctions. The omniscient narrator effectively portrays the interactions of Tysen’s citizens, such as Doobie Prat, who’d “never been a mean drunk, just a persistent one,” “railroad mistress” Bertie Reardon and Matilda and Albert St. John, the town eccentrics, who show up for Saturday night movies in the school gym wearing formal attire. With an easy touch, Gormly sheds light on their divided souls—whether they be “sprinklers” or “fish eaters,” in preacher Busby’s parlance for Methodists and Roman Catholics—and shows how redemption and acceptance can triumph over righteousness and ignorance.
A fresh take on forbidden love and forgiveness with warm, winning characters.Pub Date: July 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475933628
Page Count: 306
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
A charming and incisive debut.
Four young nuns wind up running a halfway house full of quirky characters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
Four Catholic sisters live with the elderly Sister Roberta in upstate New York. All on the edge of turning 30, the young women are at loose ends: Their day care is shuttered, and Sister Roberta is retiring. However, the four women refuse to be parted: “We were fixed to one another, like parts of some strange, asymmetrical body: Frances was the mouth; Mary Lucille, the heart; Therese, the legs. And I, Agatha, the eyes.” Eventually, the Buffalo diocese decides to transfer them to Rhode Island, where they are put in charge of running Little Neon, a “Mountain Dew”–colored house for residents trying to get sober and get back on their feet. When the local Catholic high school needs someone to teach geometry, the sisters volunteer Agatha, who is labelled as the quietest but the smartest of the quartet. As Agatha immerses herself in her new life, she finds the residents of Little Neon, from parolee Baby to Tim Gary, whose disfigured jaw prevents him from finding love, open her eyes to new realities, as do her colleagues and students at the high school. Eventually, Agatha can no longer ignore that the church, and most of all she herself, is changing. Luchette’s novel, her first, is structured in small chapters that feel like vignettes from a slightly wacky indie film. The book is frequently vibrant with resonant images: Agatha learning to roller skate in Little Neon’s driveway or a resident drunk in a sequined dress riding a lawnmower through the snow. But even though the book feels light, Luchette does not turn away from the responsibility of examining the darkness undergirding the institution of the Catholic Church.
A charming and incisive debut.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-26526-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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