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AGE

Name: AGE
Author: Hortense Calisher
ISBN: 0714530123

by Hortense Calisher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 1987

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In this brief wry-and-bitters mulling of the nagging, niggling, old-age preoccupations with death and dying, Calisher has reined in her usual frothing diction and dialogue for the even-tempered (but hardly conventional) joint meditation of a witty, much-loving septuagenarian couple. Gemma, 77, is an architect; husband Rupert, 73, is a poet, and they have each decided to add perhaps an "inch of grace" to dying by recording daily accounts of living and thinking in an "almanac"—to be read by the survivor. Old age is scary in minor habit changes—"the sudden cabs, purse fumblings, the sense that one has talked too much. . ." (or not at all). Both have blackouts and blank lapses. Rupert "never dreamed that either of us would begin dying in the mind." The past seeps in—Gemma's first husband, Italian Arturo; two daughters—one doomed and dead, one in Saudi Arabia; Rupert's first wife, Gertrude. And the pair are visited by contemporaries as well—fatuous and successful Sherm ("The grand old countryman of American culture") and dutiful wife Kit (Gemma and Rupert will read later of their double suicide). The visit of forever-onstage Sherm makes them appreciate even more their non-octogenarian neighbor, Mr. Quinn, floating sweetly on hope, and having, to their delight, "an amateur old age." They're called upon to attend Gertrude in her hospice-style dying—a grisly business, but Gertrude's plan to reclaim Rupert, at last, dies with her. The two quarrel fiercely over the need for their almanac: like any "infighting couple. . .two angry sofas shouting True, True across a square of rug." As for old age: "It's like life. A total disease. . .worthy of being spoken of every day." An amusing, acrid and sharp view of the "total disease" of life and death, paced by Calisher's own teasing imagination.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1987

ISBN: 0714530123

Page Count: 124

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TATTOO FOR A SLAVE
by Hortense Calisher

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SUNDAY JEWS
by Hortense Calisher

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THE NOVELLAS OF HORTENSE CALISHER
by Hortense Calisher

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THE GOOD HOUSE

by Ann Leary ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2013

Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.

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A supposedly recovering alcoholic real estate agent tells her not-exactly-trustworthy version of life in her small New England town in this tragicomic novel by Leary (Outtakes from a Marriage, 2008, etc.).

Sixty-year-old Hildy Good, a divorced realtor who has lived all her life in Wendover on the Massachusetts North Shore, proudly points to having an ancestor burned at the stake at the Salem witch trials. In fact, her party trick is to do psychic readings using subtle suggestions and observational skills honed by selling homes. At first, the novel seems to center on Hildy’s insights about her Wendover neighbors, particularly her recent client Rebecca McAllister, a high-strung young woman who has moved into a local mansion with her businessman husband and two adopted sons. Hildy witnesses Rebecca having trouble fitting in with other mothers, visiting the local psychiatrist Peter Newbold, who rents an office above Hildy’s, and winning a local horse show on her expensive new mount. Hildy is acerbically funny and insightful about her neighbors; many, like her, are from old families whose wealth has evaporated. She becomes Rebecca’s confidante about the affair Rebecca is having with Peter, whom Hildy helped baby-sit when he was a lonely child. She helps another family who needs to sell their house to afford schooling for their special needs child. She begins an affair with local handyman Frankie Getchell, with whom she had a torrid romance as a teenager. But Hildy, who has recently spent a stint in rehab and joined AA after an intervention by her grown daughters, is not quite the jolly eccentric she appears. There are those glasses of wine she drinks alone at night, those morning headaches and memory lapses that are increasing in frequency. As both Rebecca’s and Hildy’s lives spin out of control, the tone darkens until it approaches tragedy. Throughout, Hildy is original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy.

Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-250-01554-9

Page Count: 304

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
I'VE TRIED BEING NICE
by Ann Leary

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THE FOUNDLING
by Ann Leary

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THE CHILDREN
by Ann Leary

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Trailer Drops for ‘The Good House’ Film Adaptation

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."