Zevin’s ambitious reach into the future may put off some readers, but others will warm to her clear-eyed compassion for...
Picture-perfect evangelical family spirals out of control.
Zeroing in on the high anxiety that credit-starved Americans feel in the current economic climate, Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, 2007, etc.) delivers a bitter yet believable portrait of the national dream gone terribly wrong. Broken into four sections that jump from 2000 to 2006 to 2012 to 2022, the novel chronicles the high times and bottom-hitting lows of a daydreaming dad and compulsive shopper mom who are trying to raise a family in the Seventh Day Adventist faith while keeping secrets that wreak havoc on their children. Roger Pomeroy is a 42-year-old former pastor who decides to go back to school and earn a doctorate, a decision that pushes his family to the brink of starvation while he carries on a sordid affair with his supervising professor. His wife Georgia, a data-entry clerk, is sucking the family credit cards dry to pay for the wedding of eldest daughter Helen. Despite their lies, Roger and Georgia are comforted by their faith. “The world tells you that all these secular debts matter, but my whole reason for being put here on this earth is to tell you that they do not. The only debts that matter are spiritual debts,” advises the preacher at their church. Georgia’s financial shenanigans, including the acquisition of credit cards in her children’s names, are hard on all the kids, but hardest on youngest daughter Patsy, who joins the Army in an attempt to earn enough money for college and is sent to Afghanistan.
Zevin’s ambitious reach into the future may put off some readers, but others will warm to her clear-eyed compassion for people doing the best they can and wreaking considerable damage along the way.Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1923-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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