Great fare for lovers of police stories and a dead-on accurate portrayal of the era’s attitudes toward women.
The NYPD's "No Girls Allowed" sign fades in this fictional account of a real woman’s struggle for respect and success in a profession that men wanted all to themselves.
Men wanted all the manly stuff, anyway, like murders and armed robberies. The New York City Policewomen’s Bureau gave the gentler gender something to do, like arresting pickpockets, shoplifters, and hookers. But policewomen wanted more. In 1958, Marie Carrara (in real life, Marie Cirile) is a “handpicked gal,” chosen by her boss to assist male detectives in robbery stakeouts and drug buys. Note: assist only. “Girls can’t be real police, baby,” Marie’s cop husband, Sid, tells their daughter. “They stay inside, so they can’t get hurt.” Former NYPD detective Conlon's (Red on Red, 2011, etc.) novel follows the growth of a career and the disintegration of a marriage. In 1955, Marie joins in family laughter about the idea of “she-cops” who “might as well join the circus.” Then she passes the policewomen’s civil service exam and never looks back. Over the years she takes on difficult cases and realizes she isn't "a kid anymore, but a cop on a job.” In her marriage, Sid cheats while Marie would no more stray than be a Soviet spy. And he frequently beats her, which she puts up with for years. “You’re nothing without me,” he tells her, which cannot be further from the truth. They’re traditional Italian Catholics, and the word “divorce” would give their parents the vapors. So for a long time Marie publicly pretends to be in love with Sid. But she tells his lover on the phone, “Pick him up in the next hour, and I’ll give you a free toaster.” Meanwhile, day by day, she earns professional respect and eventually earns promotion to detective. There are no dramatic set pieces in the novel, yet it’s an engaging drama with cinematic potential. Society was on the cusp of major change, and the Policewomen’s Bureau would disappear in the early 1970s when people became police officers instead of policewomen and policemen.
Great fare for lovers of police stories and a dead-on accurate portrayal of the era’s attitudes toward women.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948924-07-8
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing...
The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.).
Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in “Pharmacy,” which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she’s not exactly patient with shy young people—or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in “Incoming Tide” with the news that her father, like Kevin’s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in “Starving,” though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout’s rueful tales. The Kitteridges’ son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn’t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive’s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in “Winter Concert” has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout’s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life’s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, “It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
PERSPECTIVES
Cheerfully engaging.
From Australian Moriarty (The Last Anniversary, 2006, etc.), domestic escapism about a woman whose temporary amnesia makes her re-examine what really matters to her.
Alice wakes from what she thinks is a dream, assuming she is a recently married 29-year-old expecting her first child. Actually she is 39, the mother of three and in the middle of an acrimonious custody battle with her soon-to-be ex-husband Nick. She’s fallen off her exercise bike, and the resulting bump on her head has not only erased her memory of the last 10 years but has also taken her psychologically back to a younger, more easygoing self at odds with the woman she gathers she has become. While Alice-at-29 is loving and playful if lacking ambition or self-confidence, Alice-at-39 is a highly efficient if too tightly wound supermom. She is also thin and rich since Nick now heads the company where she remembers him struggling in an entry-level position. Alice-at-29 cannot conceive that she and Nick would no longer be rapturously in love or that she and her adored older sister Elisabeth could be estranged, and she is shocked that her shy mother has married Nick’s bumptious father and taken up salsa dancing. She neither remembers nor recognizes her three children, each given a distinct if slightly too cute personality. Nor does she know what to make of the perfectly nice boyfriend Alice-at-39 has acquired. As memory gradually returns, Alice-at-29 initially misinterprets the scattered images and flashes of emotion, especially those concerning Gina, a woman who evidently caused the rift with Nick. Alice-at-29 assumes Gina was Nick’s mistress, only to discover that Gina was her best friend. Gina died in a freak car accident and in her honor, Alice-at-39 has organized mothers from the kids’ school to bake the largest lemon meringue pie on record. But Alice-at-29 senses that Gina may not have been a completely positive influence. Moriarty handles the two Alice consciousnesses with finesse and also delves into infertility issues through Elizabeth’s diary.
Cheerfully engaging.Pub Date: June 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-15718-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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