CAPE BRETON ROAD

Name: CAPE BRETON ROAD
Author: D.R. MacDonald
ISBN: 0-15-100523-0

by D.R. MacDonald ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2001

Despite many striking moments and incidental virtues, this feels both underimagined and underdeveloped: the work of a...

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The harsh beauty of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island forms the backdrop for this vivid if somewhat diffuse chronicle of rootlessness and sexual rivalry, the first novel from the author of the critically praised story collection Eyestone (1988).

Nineteen-year-old Innis Corbett was born in Cape Breton but raised in the States (Watertown, Massachusetts, near Boston), where his father’s accidental death and his mother’s promiscuity and neglect of him have left Innis on his own to find trouble—in the form of repeated car thefts, for which he’s been deported and is spending a year living with his uncle Starr, a quick-tempered TV repairman. Back in “his” country, Innis is caught cutting down a tree on a neighbor’s property, where he furtively grows the marijuana cash crop he hopes will purchase his freedom from Starr, with whom he maintains a tense détente that’s pushed past the breaking point when the 40-ish woman his uncle brings home, former “air hostess” Claire Watson, arouses Innis’s frustrated sexuality, propelling him to further acts of theft and violence. This is a thickly detailed, convincingly claustrophobic narrative, enlivened by precise, ominous descriptions of the Corbetts’ wintry environment (“The storms had driven in a huge tree trunk, its amputated roots already sea-worn, topped with claws of ice,” etc.) and dramatically effective crisp, pungent dialogue. But it’s so rigorously downbeat that it’s hard to identify with any of MacDonald’s tightly wound principal characters. Furthermore, the heavy burden of background action (which seems to have been crucially formative for Innis) is doled out in arbitrary brief flashbacks lacking in either cumulative force or variety. One wonders if Innis was conceived as another Aeneas, a wanderer without a country, mourning his dead father—but if so, the comparisons aren’t fully explored.

Despite many striking moments and incidental virtues, this feels both underimagined and underdeveloped: the work of a first-rate storyteller who isn’t yet a novelist.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-15-100523-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.