A bustling, gossipy, Belva Plain-style chat-up taking place in 1893 Chicago and peopled with some real personalities of the time, who go beyond mere cameo-hood to influence the lives of two women- -one rich and miserable, the other poor and ambitious. Young Josef and Hannah Chernik, of a dirt-poor Russian Jewish immigrant family, visit the 1893 Columbian Exposition where, by lucky chance, Josef can show off his sharpshooting ability at Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Meanwhile, also at the World's Fair is lovely Isabelle Woodruff, who's a mere possession, ignored by cold banker husband Phillips, and having no fun at all. Eventually, both Isabelle and Hannah (who never meet) stir to independence—from Phillip (who has some S/M sex on with the maid) and from poverty, respectively. Isabelle begins to be involved with the good work of Hull House, founded by Jane Addams to enrich the lives of the poor, and responds to the courting of lawyer Clarence Darrow, who opens her eyes to the injustices foisted upon working people. At the same time, Hannah sews for slave wages at Marshall Field's, is wooed by a dashing sales manager, becomes pregnant, and then is discarded. Exiled from family, she lands at the brothel of tough-with-heart-of-gold Carrie Watson, and toils in that particular vineyard; later, however, she'll convince Carrie that she has more lasting talent in real-estate investment. (The baby is permanently farmed out.) By now, Josef has moved his parents to the company town of the Pullman Palace Car Company, where there are myriad reasons for the famous strike that follows. Josef is unfairly accused of murder but is defended by Darrow. Throughout, there are savage murders of young women by the Indian Running Wolf, whose own family was just as savagely murdered at Wounded Knee. In a farewell, Cody offers Running Wolf a way home. A good, juicy first novel, rich with gusty scandals, strikes, and show-stoppers.
Pub Date: June 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-11223-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
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Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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