Yglesias’s first novel in 12 years (The Saviors, 1987, etc.) is an intense portrayal of four elderly sisters variously raging against the dying of the light in contemporary Miami Beach. The focal character is 80-year-old Jenny, who travels from her New England home to help settle the affairs of older sisters Eva and Naomi (beginning with 95-year-old Eva, each is five years older than her younger sibling), because 85-year-old Flora, an annoyingly vigorous extrovert, is too busy with her own unlikely affairs (she’s actually a standup comic working the nursing-home circuit). None of this is entirely believable, and the story’s erratic content and pacing are magnified by inordinately detailed descriptions of Miami landscapes and interiors, often presented as simple itineraries. Despite the threat of an approaching hurricane, very little happens. Jenny, always the dutiful youngest, ever the care-giver, arranges for Eva and Naomi to leave their condominiums and enter full-care facilities. Still, the novel has many impressive strengths. Jenny is an apt commentator on the trashing of contemporary culture (and Miami Beach is a wonderful target); a keen-eyed observer of such condescending horrors as “Miss Molly and Her Songs of Yesteryear . . . a very large, violently redheaded woman in an elaborately beribboned dress.” Yglesias pointedly, poignantly dramatizes the continuing imperiousness of the sex drive, even among the very elderly (Flora crows about virtually all her many boyfriends: “He’s desperately in love with me. I only hope he can get it up”); and she effectively distinguishes the personalities of the four sisters: frightened, cancer-ridden Naomi and frail, querulous, yet tenderhearted Eva are the most vividly done (Flora’s Auntie Mame—like brio is rather more of an acquired taste). Not one of Yglesias’s best, but nevertheless a thoughtful, grimly convincing portrait of old age: something of a rarity in our fiction, and a story well worth attending to.
Pub Date: Oct. 5, 1999
ISBN: 1-883285-16-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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