Solid, old-fashioned fiction updated with frank language, sex, and an underclass milieu: a natural for any reading group not...
A new arrival shakes up a group home for at-risk teenagers, in this strongly plotted and characterized latest from veteran Hower (A Garden of Demons, 2003, etc.).
Narrator Ruth Sullivan knows a fair amount about dangerous behavior from her own promiscuous, drug-addled past. Husband Mike fathered a child with an African woman before Ruth met him in Tanzania, where they ran a school before getting married and returning to the States. So they’re nonjudgmental (but not enabling) about the five girls who live with them in a state-funded residence on the bleak outskirts of New York City. Hower’s former counseling experience shows as he swiftly and cogently sketches the personalities and grim histories of overweight Darlene (whose mother is dying of AIDS), sexy Mafia daughter Gina, perennial runaway Sally (fleeing abusive parents), Native American Rose (a recovering alcoholic), and 16-year-old former prostitute Valecia. None of them are prepared for May, who blows in after “a disagreement with the cops at the Greyhound station” and tells a pack of lies about everything from her racial background to her age. She’s abrasive and provocative, leading the others in a brawl at school that gets her arrested again, but she’s also oddly vulnerable. When she brings home new boyfriend Paco, a paroled convict now counseling drug-addicted kids, the emotional and social complications set in motion threaten to destroy the home and the Sullivans’ marriage. Hower does a particularly good job of delineating their marital tensions (not enough sex, lingering resentments from previous infidelities, etc.), but he also shows the affection and commitment that still bind the couple, though neither can say for how long. His matter-of-fact portrait of the girls’ and Paco’s struggles quietly makes the point that their problems stem as much from poverty and lack of opportunity as from any personal failings. Inevitably, violence sparks the denouement, but Hower also suggests there’s hope for characters we’ve come to care about.
Solid, old-fashioned fiction updated with frank language, sex, and an underclass milieu: a natural for any reading group not wedded to middle-class domestic dramas.Pub Date: April 18, 2005
ISBN: 0-86538-114-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Ontario Review
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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