So robust and resilient are Bauermeister’s characters that readers may wish she had challenged them with thornier dilemmas.
A Seattle chef and her circle of friends cope with life’s pivotal moments.
In this follow-up to The School of Essential Ingredients (2009), Chef Lillian continues to run her small restaurant, which has become a hub for people in transition. In what is essentially a collection of linked stories, the following characters have their say: Al, Lillian's accountant; her sous-chef, Chloe; Isabelle, an elderly woman with whom Chloe is staying; the lanky and taciturn dishwasher, Finnegan; Louise, Al's tightly wound wife; Lillian’s new boyfriend, widower Tom; and Isabelle’s daughter Abby, a stickler for order. Chance dictates these characters’ interactions, as does mutual attraction or dislike. Miscommunication is a major theme, at times blunted by almost farcical misunderstandings, as when Louise assumes Al is having an affair with Chloe, while Al assumes Louise no longer wants his affection. Lillian has just discovered she is pregnant and cannot bring herself to tell Tom, who later will take offense that Isabelle found out before he did. Isabelle knows that she is sliding into possible Alzheimer’s, and Abby (one of the more realistic portrayals) is exasperated that her younger siblings aren’t joining her in pressuring their mother to sell the family cabin to pay for her long-term care. At Isabelle’s behest (when she’s not forgetting things, she’s a wise woman), Chloe goes out with Finnegan, who encourages her to keep a notebook. She’s beginning to think he might be soul-mate material until she sees his trunk full of notebooks by other girlfriends, a disturbing find that Finnegan must explain in his own chapter. Lush descriptions of food, including the smells that provoke Lillian’s telltale morning sickness, tie it all together. Although the art of uncrossing all these mixed signals (a bit too neatly) is not lost on Bauermeister, the narrative, carried by so many disparate points of view, never quite comes into focus.
So robust and resilient are Bauermeister’s characters that readers may wish she had challenged them with thornier dilemmas.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16211-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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