An impressive piece of mimicry, but readers in search of droll comic fiction depicting the madness inherited, so to speak,...
This almost defiantly plummy first novel by a Scots writer labors to out-Austen the immortal Jane in a deceptively mild-mannered exploration of the conflicting claims of love, property, and propriety set in a Derbyshire village near the end of the 18th century.
When jovial, empty-headed country squire Nathaniel Horne (kin to Fielding’s abrasive Squire Western) perishes in a ludicrous accident, his young son Edward stands to inherit the family’s handsome estate (and the eponymous “temple”) Winterbourne. Thirteen years pass, and Edward grows to manhood, as well as an appreciation of, not just Winterbourne, but his powerful neighbor Sir Anthony Apreece’s unhappy younger wife Daisy. Sir Anthony wants the Horne lands as much as Edward and Daisy want each other, and the story settles into a succession of (rather redundant) scenes detailing the plots in which all three involve themselves. Fleming echoes the relaxed style of the roomy traditional novel quite skillfully, filling it with both an enormity of convincing décor, idiom, detail, and walk-on characters burdened with aggressively eccentric names (Tom Glossipp, Augustus Spratchett, Digbeth Chiddlestone, et al). He also creates a nice contrast between Sir Anthony’s righteous avarice and the “unreal world” of equality for women that Daisy finds only in Fanny Burney’s popular novel Evelina. It’s all entertaining enough, but it moves at the pace of a promenade: observation, conversation, and commentary pretty much dwarf the story’s inherent drama—at least until a very odd melodramatic climax (which seems to have wandered in from another novel entirely) triggered by Sir Anthony’s vicious exploitation of Robert Pumphrey, a banker and moneylender determined not to become the villain people assume he already is.
An impressive piece of mimicry, but readers in search of droll comic fiction depicting the madness inherited, so to speak, from the activities of landownership and love may as well stick with Austen and Trollope.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7868-6676-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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