A richly satisfying novel of blood ties, the interplay of nature and nurture and the secrets that even the closest families...
A marvelous character study with minimal plot.
One of Britain’s foremost novelists, Swift (Light of Day, 2003, etc.) displays his profound empathy in a novel that never leaves the mind of its first-person narrator Paula Hook. It all transpires over a few hours on a June night in 1995 and is told as something of a bedtime story by Paula to her sleeping twin children, Kate and Nick. Tomorrow, she explains, their father will reveal something momentous that will change all of their lives. The timing is significant, because the revelation will occur the week after the twins’ 16th birthday and the week before the Hooks’ 25th anniversary. Though she keeps talking about tomorrow, most of the narrative takes place after midnight, so it’s actually today when the family dynamic will be threatened. And though she addresses her story to her sleeping children, she is plainly talking to herself, revealing intimacies about her own life and her relationship with her husband that no mother would likely inflict on her children. Now a successful art dealer, she explains how she met her husband, biologist Mike Hook, how the two met and fell so rapturously in love, but waited nine years after marrying before having children. What she doesn’t explain until well past the novel’s midpoint is what Mike could possibly reveal that could undermine the love that the two plainly feel for each other and share with their children. If there’s a weakness to the novel, it’s that the suspense that Swift takes such pains to sustain makes the climax feel a little anticlimactic. Yet Paula Hook is a character of such heart, soul and intelligence that the reader forgives her foreboding repetition of “tomorrow.” No novelist is better than Swift at celebrating, as Paula explains, “how sweet and treasurable even the most unambitious moments of life can be.”
A richly satisfying novel of blood ties, the interplay of nature and nurture and the secrets that even the closest families keep from each other.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-307-26690-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
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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