Ambitious and well written, but way over the top.
An overwrought first novel, in which a young wife and mother encounters dust storms and despair in Depression-era Colorado.
Bena Jonssen and her husband, a physician, are moving to the small town of Pueblo with their seven-week-old son because back at the private clinic where he worked in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Ted Jonssen refused to give morphine to a woman who proved to be the mayor’s daughter. Or maybe her accusation that he molested her was true: the Jonssen marriage is already fraught with Bena’s knowledge of Ted’s infidelities. The action gets even more unpleasant in Pueblo, where the Jonssens’ babysitter matter-of-factly displays cigarette burns inflicted by her mother—and in an alley, Bena finds a pregnant prostitute sucking meat juices from butcher-shop paper. The local elite, subjects of Bena’s articles in The Pueblo Chieftain, also harbor nasty secrets. The Mineral Palace, built to promote Colorado’s mining wealth but now crumbling away on the outskirts, serves as an apt (albeit crushingly obvious) metaphor for this place of failed dreams and moral rot. To her credit, Julavits looks beyond her personal experiences for fictional material, but her reach exceeds her grasp. Everything is too studied, and none of the emotions rings quite true, not even Bena’s concern for her baby, who is alarmingly unresponsive to the world around him. The atmosphere is so bleak from the beginning that the increasingly grim developments become almost comical, though no one will be laughing at two horrific murders involving children or sordid revelations of sexual abuse and intra-family violence. Even the mysterious cowboy who attracts Bena ultimately commits a violent act, which is as implausible as the anachronistic talk at the Chieftain about newspapers “now competing with movies, books, and radio” as entertainment. It’s all too much; without the emotional anchor of characters to care about, the apocalyptic tone Julavits cultivates seems more affected than earned.
Ambitious and well written, but way over the top.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-399-14622-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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
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
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