Over-the-top melodrama, but not without its own preposterous charm.
Living large . . . but living a lie.
Francesca Valentine, world-renowned violinist, sees a tabloid article that reveals her former name and a photo of her formerly very fat self, and wants to die of shame. Her two perfect children, Jessica and Jon, never knew that she was just “a fat black girl from Marietta, Georgia,” born Claudia Jenkins, twin sister of the eternally hungry and flatulent Bone. Her fondness for her mother Willamina’s cornbread, fried chicken, and other soul food gave her a butt big enough to make a piano stool disappear, according to her foul-mouthed daddy, known as the Deacon. He was always trying to distract the miserable but musically gifted young girl when she practiced anyhow. Well, Hattie Mae, a mysterious relative, took matters into her own capable hands and gave Claudia something she doesn’t have to sit on: a violin. Soon, her incredible talent got her accepted into the Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra. Again, Hattie Mae stepped in and swept Claudia away to Europe, where she was tutored by an Italian genius (with a rare talent for oral sex). Many arpeggios and orgasms later, she had a new name—Francesca Valentine—and a new life. Now, she has graced the covers of magazines and dined with princes and diplomats, even performed for a US president and one monarch (neither named) for good measure. But something’s missing . . . . Then not Claudia’s but Hattie Mae’s story unfolds in flashback: serving time for murder, she was pardoned by the lecherous governor and released, only to become his personal in-house sex slave. Even though he seems to prefer an inventive and rather repellent form of squirming to actual intercourse, she becomes pregnant. Hoping to give her illegitimate child every advantage in life becomes her obsession—and she finds a young pregnant girl to stand in for her as Claudia’s mother (this would be Willamina, mother of Bone).
Over-the-top melodrama, but not without its own preposterous charm.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-76103-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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