A graceful meditation on the value of confronting one’s past, muddied by a plot twist.
Unearthed memories resuscitate a flagging spirit in this debut novel.
When Carol Noeleen, 75, takes to her bed, seemingly for good, her patient husband, Mark, is at a loss to explain such a withdrawal from their comfortable life. Carol isn’t ill, at least not physically, but she is afflicted, and the culprit is a loquacious spider that only she can perceive. At first, Carol tries to reject the spectral presence in the upper corner of her bedroom. But the spider’s insistent whispering, coaxing Carol into confronting memories that she’d just as soon consign to her “forgettery,” proves too therapeutic to ignore. The memories come then, some mundane, others harrowing, like that of the abortion she had as a young woman, or the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. A sense of mystery builds from her unburdening, a feeling that there is a particular trauma, significant enough to be buried in the preconscious mind, toward which the spider is leading her. Admirably, Darling doesn’t indulge in pulp fiction, maintaining a cool, mature tone, appropriate for an older character looking back on a life fully lived. Carol winks at the absurdity of having conversations with a pretend spider, but she knows her creation’s raison d’être: “It’s something to do with coming to terms with yourself...tying up loose ends.” Carol needs to tell her stories, if only inwardly, and she won’t return to life until they are sorted and ordered. Strange then, in a work of luminous, floating reflections, that the author pivots toward plot. A dinner party offers a chance connection that may allow Carol and Mark to rectify a tragedy suffered by their housekeeper, and the prospect draws the protagonist fully from her bed. A certain patness to this final section undermines what came before—did Carol really need to parse the memories of her varied life? Or did she just need to try to come to someone’s rescue?
A graceful meditation on the value of confronting one’s past, muddied by a plot twist.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5245-1929-2
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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