A general, lukewarm approach in loosely related stories without a burning theme or focus.
A series of normalized, slice-of-life vignettes from first-timer Poliner shows the sad fallout of a divorce on a 1970s Jewish family.
The title is taken from the Hartford insurance company where father Daniel Kahn is an executive, providing an unusually lucrative life for his family in Wells, Connecticut, where other dads are machinists at Pratt and Whitney. The Kahns—homemaker mother Naomi, daughters Carolyn and Hannah—are the only Jews in town, owners of a big, newly renovated house and fancy stereo. The money from provider Dad flows freely, and shopping trips to Loehmann’s are frequent. But the Kahn parents aren’t getting along: they differ on the election of Richard Nixon, then on Watergate, as Dad has conservative ideas and Mom begins to assert different feelings of her own. “Can you support what you feel with facts?” Father asks scornfully of his wife, indicating the deepening fissures between them. Mom’s burgeoning self-awareness coincides with the two girls’ teenaged years, and Dad, grown demanding, critical, bossy and ineffectual, is squeezed out, after 23 years of marriage. Other vignettes pursue the painful adolescence of daughter Carolyn and her popular, anorexic girlfriend Clarissa as they smoke pot under the eyes of their elders; Hannah’s first sexual experience, with boyfriend Jackie; her later pregnancy, at 31, in 1993, when she finally decides to have a baby with him; and Carolyn’s going to college in Miami, to get as far away from Wells as possible. Poliner explores the various well-trod currents of the era—the women’s movement, the exercise craze, the explosion of sex, the general smashing of familial relationships—only to come around to Hannah’s rueful conclusion as she holds her new baby in her arms: “Mostly I feel like I’ve never lived a life.”
A general, lukewarm approach in loosely related stories without a burning theme or focus.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-57962-112-0
Page Count: 221
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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