Wagner’s clean, sturdy prose imparts an inevitability to what is taboo, but some gratuitous mystification prevents a...
The elemental passions of two siblings fuel this first novel, whose contemporary trappings fall away to reveal a fable outside time.
Janet and Stephen are lovers in a vaguely defined England. They are youngish and have careers in the arts and live together in low-key harmony. Janet gets a call from a lawyer: Her mother died three weeks ago and has left her a small house. Janet is startled; surely her mother died years ago in America? Still, she drives north, alone; though she suffers from seizures, brief electrical storms in her head, she can handle them. The tiny, remote house is by the sea. Outside is a stranger named Tom, a garage mechanic. They have matching keys. Janet’s protests that she is the sole legal owner fall on deaf ears; Tom’s in possession. Into this straightforward narrative Wagner (Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters, 2001, etc.), the American-born literary editor of The Times of London, has inserted memories—Tom’s, of being raised alone by his mother (who would eventually abandon him); and Janet’s, of being raised alone by her father in America. Tom’s mother told him fairy tales, of a mother abandoning her baby for a magical seafaring lover, of a seal who could change into a woman. Janet’s father’s stories were based in reality: traveling to England on a liner, meeting the love of his life, returning with his bride. The turning-point comes when Janet smashes her cell phone; there will be no return to Stephen. She is not afraid of Tom; they share the same mother. Blood is calling to blood. Barriers dissolve as Tom and Janet make love and later swim alongside a pair of seals. They share a feeling of loss, but they have found each other, and the chance to make a new home (a key concept).
Wagner’s clean, sturdy prose imparts an inevitability to what is taboo, but some gratuitous mystification prevents a complete surrender to her spell.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-393-06148-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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