Ignore the cover copy: The Group it's not. Still, Abeel's glib chronicle of the not-so-surprising lives of four friends from Sarah Lawrence's Class of `58 has its entertaining moments as heiresses take to the streets and ugly ducklings win fortune and fame. Daisy Frank arrived at Sarah Lawrence on a dance scholarship, yet she soon dropped Martha Graham in favor of a pieced-together writer's life that reflected little of her early promise. Such is the fate of her three close friends as well: saintly blond Franca Broadwater, plain-faced Ginny Goldberg, and glamorous Delphine Mortimer, a red-maned heiress known for her command to ``unhook our bras and talk about Wittgenstein.'' Despite the foursome's big plans for leading grand, unconventional lives, the passage of years and the assumption that ``art was just an exalted form of occupational therapy; you didn't sacrifice romance on its account,'' manage to thwart them again and again. Delphine's ambition to run a publishing company is realized by age 32, only to crumble as she gives up her career to follow her husband to Houston. When Franca's marriage dissolves in the face of her husband's swinging-60's infidelities, she marries her divorce attorney for the sake of the children, knowing full well that he's always adored Daisy, her best friend. Daisy herself toils for years in a publishing house before an affair with a wealthy older man leads to marriage on the rebound and finally a meager existence as a divorced mother of two. Only Ginny enjoys long-lasting success, first as a women's magazine journalist and then as a morning TV show hostess—but even she encounters heartbreak as her much-loved husband dies. All four friends have seen the depths by the time they reunite at their old school 30 years later. Tolerable entertainment; the least credible move by Abeel (The Last Romance, 1985) is to see to it that all four messy lives are tidied up nicely by the end.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-62150-X
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993
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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