A sometimes irreverent, sometimes poignant story of growing apart, growing together and growing up.
Sex in the City in the ’70s and beyond.
It’s 1971, and Zooey and her old-school B.F.F.’s Elizabeth, Brenna, Danielle and Patti are new students at Sanders College in California. Their somewhat wild college years are filled with ups and downs, love and laughs–you know, the kinds of things that fill most girls’ college years. After graduating, we fast-forward to 1985, when our girls have, more or less, become women, and now instead of partying, lusting and playing their respective fields, they’re navigating their way through the real world, sometimes successfully, sometimes, well…not so much. Each woman spends the ensuing decade attempting to find a balance between happiness and adulthood–two states that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive–while maintaining some semblance of an exciting romantic life. So do they make it happen? Can a woman of a certain age have it all? According to Conrad, those oft-asked questions are answered with a resounding sometimes. A prolific novelist (Baktun 2012, 2002, etc.), short story writer, essayist and children’s book writer, Conrad has a nice way with dialogue. The fact that the characters are all the same age and share similar upbringings would make it easy for all five of their voices to get mushed together, but each woman speaks sharply and distinctly. Another plus is that her male characters, particularly the enigmatic Sean, come across as three-dimensional, something that isn’t always the case in chicks-with-posses fiction. On the other hand, the lengthier expository sections and Zooey’s internal monologue have a tendency to ramble, and, at times, slow the momentum. However, there are enough sweet moments and solid set pieces throughout the book to make it an enjoyable, if not particularly memorable, read.
A sometimes irreverent, sometimes poignant story of growing apart, growing together and growing up.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-595-48314-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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