Still another hat in the election-year-fiction ring, as former LBJ Special Assistant Valenti (A Very Human President, Speak Up with Confidence, etc.) pulls out all the stops in an effort to out-weird yesterday's headlines. The centerpiece of this scenario: smart, handsome, liberal, well- connected Texas Vice President Bill Rawlins challenges his own battered President, Don Kells, for the nomination. After a few paragraphs of lip service to unfashionably hawkish Kells, virtually all the party faithful—from Rawlins's own reptilian advisor Hoyle Henderson to main-chance White House staffer Mike Carson—prepare to bolt, leaving behind only rugged Special Assistant Clem Barkley, elderly Sen. Gifford Gray, and Kells's personal friends. Meanwhile, new trouble for the reelection campaign: Somebody's leaked word of Presidential counsel Willacy Hughes's forthcoming secret diplomatic mission to China—a game effort to stand against the newly toughened Russian confederation by supporting the leaders of a recent Chinese coup—and the likely source, newsman Roy Hickey, has been killed by a pair of Bulgarian heavies with links to the KGB; the FBI's found classified documents and dope stashed in the apartment of Terry Geer, another Special Assistant; and the charming, treacherous V.P. indicates that the Russians are prepared to make big political concessions if he's voted in. All this would be worrisome if Valenti weren't the kind of political Pollyanna who thinks the bad guys always stumble over their own feet. The book's real agenda becomes clear before it even gets under way, in the Acknowledgments and list of characters, in which names are dropped with frantic abandon, like barrels tossed off a sinking ship. Valenti's view of politics is by no means as simple-minded as some notable Beltway insiders', but he's no match for Tom Wicker (see below).
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-41735-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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