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ICY SPARKS

Name: ICY SPARKS
Author: Gwyn Hyman Rubio
ISBN: 0-670-87311-X

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1998

Well intentioned, for sure, but Icy is too much the poster child for great success as fiction.

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An overwritten, underdeveloped story celebrating Appalachia and a young woman who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome.

Kentucky’s backwoodsy mountains are the setting for this chronicle of a girl who, as an infant, was called —Icy— by her dying mother because she was as “cold as the bottom of Icy creek.” Here in the hollows, where coal is still mined, country ways prevail: people are mostly kind, but ignorance and fear can also make them behave cruelly. Descriptions (of them and the countryside) augment the rather thin tale of Icy, for the most part a sequence of vivid and brutal set-pieces: the girl’s encounter with a sadistic fourth-grade teacher; her spell in the state asylum; her first and failed romance at 13. Icy also does a lot of walking around the hollows and visiting with her family and few good friends. Lovingly raised by her grandparents, and befriended by the overweight Miss Emily, who encourages Icy to dream of college and a different life, she first experiences alarming symptoms at age ten. When stressed, she begins croaking like a frog, her eyes pop, and she helplessly lets loose a string of offensive epithets. But it’s the 1950s, and not even the kindly asylum’s doctor knows what’s wrong. Once she’s home again, Icy (called —Frog Child— by some), now shunned by her peers and feared by the locals, leads a lonely life studying the books provided by Miss Emily and a generous school principal. When her grandfather dies, her grandmother joins a church, and Icy, persuaded to come along, learns that her beautiful singing voice can be an asset to the choir. Eventually, this will win her the acceptance she’s long yearned for. An epilogue details the diagnosis she receives at college, which finally vindicates her.

Well intentioned, for sure, but Icy is too much the poster child for great success as fiction.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-87311-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
LOVE & ORDINARY CREATURES
by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOODSMAN’S DAUGHTER
by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.