Beautiful young Englishwomen and the men who disappoint them populate this tart and bitter debut collection by a former model and Vogue staff writer living in London—winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. ``I lay on the bed looking over my shoulder through a tangle of hair, across my dipping breast down to thighs like swan's wings. I felt electric and wanted him to look at me. But he slept within seconds.'' Much is expected of the men in Simpson's stories and next to nothing is received as a succession of young women living in both ancient and modern England fume over their martyrdom at the hands of love. In ``Zoe and the Pedagogues,'' a self-effacing student sullenly tolerates her professor lover's habit of treating her as a kind of pet; in ``The Bed,'' a depressed secretary risks enraging her drab young cohabiter by buying a magnificent new bed; in ``Good Friday, 1663,'' a 17th-century teenager dissects the hateful qualities of her new, much older husband while waiting to give birth to another man's child. In Simpson's world, sex is seen as a despicable business transaction (``Are you sure your friend Jim values you at your true worth?'' a wealthy wife asks her younger neighbor in ``A Shining Example'' shortly before she makes a pass at her) or as a self-imposed form of solitary confinement (``I don't know what he thinks about,'' the narrator says of her husband in the title story. `' `If only he could talk,' as old people say of their pets''), and men can be counted on to lie, steal, disappear after a single night or, worse, remain to prove themselves unutterably dull. Pessimistic images (the vacationing heroine of ``The Seafarer'' unpacks her clothes into ``a wardrobe no bigger than a coffin'') and dreary settings accumulate until the fate of the final, quasi-Kafkaesque story's heroine—death by hanging—comes as absolutely no surprise. ``Don't be morbid,'' snaps the condemned woman's mother shortly before the book's abrupt conclusion. Sound advice, too late. Simpson's talent should improve with age.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-517-58508-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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
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
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