A stunning novel—Frangello’s broken characters live in a world of terror and redemption, of magnificent sadness and beauty.
Frangello’s ambitious second novel travels the world—to Kenya, London and beyond—searching for the kind of experiences that will validate two short lives.
In the late 1980s, college sophomores Nix and Mary leave Ohio to summer in Greece. Mary has just been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and though it's unusual to be diagnosed so late (the disease kills most people in childhood), her prognosis is grim—she won't live to 25. Nix wants her to embrace what little life she has, but things go horribly wrong on Mykonos, and the two part ways. A few years later, Mary is in London, having an affair with Joshua, a South African acrobat, and living in a place one notch above a squat. Among the charismatic drifters of Arthog House are Sandor, an artist, and Yank, a photographer who involves Mary in petty crime to support his heroin addiction. None of them know about Mary's CF. One day, while out with Yank, Mary begins coughing up copious amounts of blood, their secrets now binding them in a kind of romantic nihilism. Nevertheless, Mary leaves with Joshua; they tour the world with his circus, ending up in Africa, where they work as safari guides. Having outlived her prognosis, Mary decides she wants normality and returns to the U.S. There are more men—as the title promises—each chapter named for the man who dominates a period in Mary's life before she leaves him. There's Eli, a married professor, and her birth father, Daniel, a handsome wastrel and former junkie currently living in a Mexican mansion. She becomes so sick while visiting Daniel that she returns to a hospital in the U.S., where she reunites with Geoff, the college student who rescued her and Nix in Mykonos. He's now an expert on her disease, as if he had been waiting for her. They settle down and, safe in the calm of matrimony, Mary goes to Amsterdam to meet her half brother Leo for the first time and finds both Sandor and Yank there too. For the last hundred pages, Leo, Sandor, Yank and Mary are in Morocco, under their sheltering sky, walking to Mary’s death. Throughout the novel, Mary writes endlessly to Nix, though early on we learn she was killed not long after Mykonos in the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie and that Mary’s whole short life has been a living tribute to the friend who saved her.
A stunning novel—Frangello’s broken characters live in a world of terror and redemption, of magnificent sadness and beauty.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61620-163-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
