Told in the voices of its own characters turn by turn, a stirring if somewhat artificially rendered ``lyrical'' second novel by Benedict (A World Like This, 1990), a Columbia journalism professor who's also written about the print media's handling of sex crimes (Virgin and Vamp, 1992). When Bianca D°az, a poor, lonely 14-year-old girl on Manhattan's Upper Westside, begins to abuse her newborn baby, the girl's 40-year-old mother secretly arranges for a middle-class white woman to remove and adopt the infant. That's when emotional and legal hell breaks loose for all three women. Teresa Rivera, Bianca's widowed mother, is a Dominican-American immigrant who cleans subway cars for a living and has helplessly watched her older children's lives crumble in the neighborhood's twin lures and dangers of violence and drugs. Now, Teresa is determined to help her pretty, academically smart but troubled youngest child avoid a dead-end life, and also to protect Bianca's baby from the mysterious falls and bruises she's lately been showing the marks of whenever Bianca takes care of her. But what to do? In steps Sarah Goldin, a reporter investigating Teresa's crooked slumlord—Sarah is childless, well-married, rich by ghetto standards, and is soon beguiled by Teresa and the sweetness of the baby into becoming an adoptive mother. Young Bianca, though, acting under the influence of a likable local Guardian-Angel type named Roberto, sets out to win the baby back, and the result is a court battle ending with profound grief on the part of all: Although Sarah gets the baby, she loses her beautiful home and her husband; Bianca gets a second chance, but in a life now acridly flavored with self-knowledge; and Teresa gets the admiration of the reader—after almost losing everything she loves. Ambitious and often insighful, but with the feeling of being too sparsely populated—its characters being asked to have, and comment on, perceptions not convincingly natural to them. (Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: March 11, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-94100-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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