Another winner from the author of, most recently, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Feb. 2003).
Buchan again agreeably celebrates a middle-aged woman’s use of guile and smartness to score subtle points and victories in taking back her life from a demanding husband.
Though Fanny Savage loves Will, the truth is that ever since they married—they even had to cut short their honeymoon because a sudden election was called—she’s had to be the loyal political wife: the wife who never knows when he’ll be home, who is unable to have her own life because she must be supportive, attend local events, and put up with the aides who virtually live in her house. Will is now a cabinet minister in the British Parliament, dreaming of even higher office and relying on Fanny’s unswerving loyalty. Chloe, their only child, is about to graduate from high school, and Fanny realizes that time is passing and that she needs something more in her life than family and politics. She’s also tired of coping with Will’s alcoholic and divorced sister Meg, who lives with them. Meg is there because she raised Will after their parents died young, but she is opinionated, intrusive, and frequently unreliable. Fanny used to help her own Italian-born father run his wine business, but marriage to Will ended that. Now, feeling restless and resentful, she decides to make some changes—but then her father suddenly dies. Distraught and needing time alone, she takes his ashes back to the Italian village of his birth. There, finding peace and a sense of belonging, she’s not only tempted to stay but to have an affair with an old lover, now back in her life. As she ponders what to do, life suddenly gets tough for Will when Meg dies in a drunken fall; he loses an election; and he fears that Fanny won’t come back. But Fanny, realizing that she still loves Will, knows how to use his vulnerabilities to gain some advantages of her own.
Another winner from the author of, most recently, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Feb. 2003).Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03280-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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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