A feathery feel-good story about triumph over adversity—probably another hit for Berg.
A quadriplegic mother, the 1964 Summer of Freedom and a timely visit from Elvis all come to play in Berg’s latest quick-read tearjerker.
During this historic summer in Mississippi, 13-year-old Diana Dunn is less concerned with black-voter registration (in fact, she’s not quite sure what all the fuss is about) than putting on backyard plays with best friend Suralee, and carving out some kind of independence from a life of caring for her disabled mother. Late in her pregnancy, Diana’s mother Paige contracted polio, and then miraculously gave birth to Diana in an iron lung. Her husband quickly divorced her and offered to adopt their baby, but Paige was made of stronger stuff and insisted on raising Diana herself. After three years in the iron lung, Paige returned home (Diana is raised by caretaker Peacie) paralyzed below the neck, and with a fierce determination to do right by her daughter. The two share a warm, companionable relationship, as Paige rules the roost despite her immobility (Diana obediently offers up a finger for Paige to bite whenever she misbehaves). In fact, Paige is a bit of a wonder—she has a couple of suitors, she paints, writes songs and always has time for backyard sunbathing. No-nonsense Peacie helps care for Paige and Diana, and through her and her boyfriend LaRue, the struggle for civil rights comes to the Dunn household. LaRue has recently learned how to read and has become politicized, despite the Sheriff’s ominous warning not to cause trouble. Diana’s teen worries (kissing for the first time, among them) are soon overshadowed by the difficulties of real life, including LaRue’s imprisonment and the very real potential of social services putting her in foster care. Berg (The Year of Pleasures, 2005, etc.) has the components of a forceful drama in place, but her tale lacks emotional resonance and offers an ending that defies the rest of the novel’s realism.
A feathery feel-good story about triumph over adversity—probably another hit for Berg.Pub Date: April 11, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6161-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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