An intense, impressionistic exploration of art and sexuality.
A biographer of artists reflects upon his long-term romantic relationships with his painter wife and her novelist brother in Atwill’s (The Galisteo Escarpment, 2008, etc.) novel.
One July morning in 2011, Graham Obermann is handling the final details for a scheduled birthday party that evening for his wife, modern artist Celia Prosper. People will expect him to toast Celia at the party as the love of his life, but “that is not entirely true,” he tells readers. “I love another one of the Prospers as much, if not more.” The novel then crosscuts between Graham’s party preparations and his history with the Prosper family, which began when he and Celia’s brother, Karl, shared an apartment during graduate school in 1960. Graham soon accompanied Karl home to the Prosper compound in Santa Fe, New Mexico (where Graham now lives), which was dominated by patriarch Wingrave Prosper, the first of many artists about whom Graham will write biographies. Graham marries and has children with Celia, but she accepts the fact that he spends his summers in Europe with novelist Karl, where the two men pursue a sexual relationship as well as their individual writing. Several tragedies punctuate the proceedings—Wingrave dies in a blaze that has roots in his parental transgressions, Karl experiences trauma from his stint in the Vietnam War, and other Prosper relatives tragically perish. A wrap-up at the story’s end reveals yet another shocking event and a new relationship. Santa Fe–based Atwill has crafted a colorful, complex novel. He presents his main character in the first person in its 2011 segments and in the third-person in all others; the result is a rich, prismatic portrait that touches on Graham’s musings on his own nuanced sexuality as well as his various studies of postimpressionist artists. He draws secondary characters and subplots less successfully, though; Karl’s appeal, for example, is more stated than shown, and Wingrave’s sins are worthy of further development, perhaps in a separate novel. Overall, however, this is an ambitious, beautifully rendered effort.
An intense, impressionistic exploration of art and sexuality.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63293-106-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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