A Mississippi belle totes all sorts of trendy baggageand a few southern gothic staplesin a first novel based on a real-life governor's daughter who tried to be different in a less-than- hospitable milieu and time. The purchase of a desk that belonged to a former Mississippi governor, Stephen Dunbar, and the discovery by a local antique dealer of a cache of Dunbar papers provide the opening frame for the story of Lizzie Dunbara story that begins in 1902, when Lizzie is born and father Stephen takes her dead, deformed twin brother and throws him into a pond. Neither Lizzie nor her mother will never even know that the child existed, but Genesis, the obligatory trusty black Mammy, does, and she will always hold Stephen responsible for what later happens. A chorus of voices, including Lizzie's own, carry the story on from 1902 to tell how this ``belle in her day, though wilder than most,'' came to spend the last 20 plus years of her life in the local asylum. Horrified by his son's deformity, Stephen avoids his gentle wife, who gradually fades away while he begins his political ascent. In 1916, he's elected governor, and Lizzie is sent off to Virginia to be educated as a lady. But Lizzie, whoin Stephen's opinionhas a boy's ``mind and spirit,'' soon gets into scrapes. She runs away to New York, where she meets Emma Goldman and Dorothy Day; gets seduced by a mysterious communist who infects her with syphilis; and then, ailing, returns home in 1919 to start a feminist newspaper and make further waves by hiring a black secretary. When the Dunbar money runs out during the Depression, Lizzie starts on the long decline that leads to her breakdown, her summary committal by Stephen, and her death in 1968. Poor Lizzie has to do, and stand for, so much that her collapse is an inevitable if melodramatic and predictable clichÇ. A lite read with lit pretensions.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56352-227-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Longstreet
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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