Think of the pieces here as a series of scale models that together encapsulate Paley’s generous sensibility.
Has there ever been an author like Paley?
A poet and essayist but primarily a short story writer, she functioned, before her death in 2007 at age 84, as a kind of conscience to the culture, an activist who saw art-making as political from the start. Before she became a writer, she was a committed localist, working to improve Greenwich Village’s parks and schools during the 1950s, when she had two school-age children of her own. This notion of community, and commitment, pervades her writing, presented in all its brilliant and elusive glory in this omnibus. Drawing from the efforts of a lifetime—the story collections The Little Disturbances of Man, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, and Later the Same Day; the book of essays Just As I Thought; and a selection of more than 30 poems—the idea is to showcase her versatility. But if Paley is a better fiction writer than a poet or essayist (her short stories are among the finest produced by an American), the result is to remind us of her vision, her consistency. As a writer, Paley stands outside the usual categories, blurring naturalism with postmodernism, straddling the old world and the new. The collection highlights that without belaboring the point. Look at the magnificent “Goodbye and Good Luck,” in which a spinster aunt confesses to her niece that she is getting married; “I was popular in certain circles, says Aunt Rose,” the story begins. Or “A Conversation with My Father,” which opens with a request: “I would like you to write a simple story just once more,” the narrator’s aging father asks. “Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next.” Still, try as she might, the narrator can’t hide the fact that this is the sort of writing, “the absolute line between two points,” she has “always despised…because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.” For Paley, that’s the key to her perspective, regardless of the genre in which she works. “What does a writer leave behind?” George Saunders asks in his introduction. “Scale models of a way of seeing and thinking.”
Think of the pieces here as a series of scale models that together encapsulate Paley’s generous sensibility.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-16582-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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