A mostly enjoyable, if flawed, set of stories.
Tales of grace and despair abound in a new short story collection from Mulhern (Drenched to the Bone, 2016, etc.).
Most of these stories follow Molly Bonamici, a girl coming of age in Italian-American Boston. Her parents are consumed by work, so her main bond is with her beloved grandmother, or “Nonna.” In “Through a Convent Gate,” Molly and Nonna visit a crabby alcoholic neighbor’s home—a trip that first seems compassionate but then becomes a robbery. In “Mannequin,” Molly’s prank on an obnoxious college roommate leads to an unexpectedly extreme outcome. In “Smoke Rings,” she and Nonna conspire to fake an injury and scam a bank manager, discussing some facts of life afterward, and in “Myra Bocca,” an older Molly living in Florida encounters an intrusive shop proprietor who unexpectedly steals her credit card. Only two entries focus on other characters: the title story, in which a young boy forms an unlikely bond with a perpetually unlucky and alcoholic neighbor, and the final piece, which tells of a young teacher in a dysfunctional classroom, struggling to understand his own divorce. Mulhern demonstrates considerable powers of description, particularly when portraying his saddest characters: one woman, for example, has “broken capillaries that sloped down the sides of her nostrils” and “spindly, awkward limbs [that] stuck out of a round body, like you might see in a kindergartner’s rendering of a person.” Another of the author’s strengths is in eliciting compassion for less-than-likable figures. Nonna, for example, sneers at others and cheerfully damages Molly’s moral compass, but a glimpse of her aging, bruised body connotes a life of hard living. Molly herself is harder to pin down, showing compassion in some stories and cold detachment in others. Some of the material is repeated with variations—one story, for example, appears again as part of a later, longer piece, and it’s debatable whether this repetition creates meaningful layers or simply takes up space. Mulhern also offers some distractingly over-the-top moments (including a few deaths that seem almost cartoonish), but the quieter scenes show the mind of a talented writer at work.
A mostly enjoyable, if flawed, set of stories.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5233-1859-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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