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PERFECT SILENCE

Newcomer Hutton writes vividly about war and lovingly about baseball: an occasionally sentimental debut redeemed by passion...

Baseball and the Civil War combine compatibly in this eminently likable, at times stirring, debut.

Living with his father on a hardscrabble farm in rural Virginia, 16-year-old Joe Tyler knows little of the outside world. It's 1864, and the bloody struggle between North and South is already three years old, but even this is largely beyond Joe's scope—though it won't be much longer. What Joe does know is "base ball"; his closest friend, Terence Hooker, has just come back from New York with stories about it, plus a leather ball and a picture of a bat they can use to model one of their own. Almost instantly, Joe gives his heart to the marvelous game for which he has such unmistakable talent. It takes him out of himself, enabling him to cope with the painful death of his mother and the almost as painful remoteness of his grief-stricken father. Gathering boys from neighboring farms, he plays whenever he can—until suddenly the war sweeps him up and into the Confederate army. At the savage Battle of the Wilderness, he's wounded, captured, and sent north to a brutal prison camp. Many die there, but grit and some luck help Joe survive. In the midst of mindless, often gruesome cruelty, he meets with unexpected kindness and, most importantly, with Sarah Kingsley, who helps repair the emotional damage inflicted by war. Hostilities end, and baseball's remarkable lockstep march with America begins in earnest. To Joe, an integral part of it, baseball is a metaphor for life, proof it can be led with grace, commitment, and honor.

Newcomer Hutton writes vividly about war and lovingly about baseball: an occasionally sentimental debut redeemed by passion and obvious sincerity.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2000

ISBN: 1-891369-20-2

Page Count: 330

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000

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RULES OF CIVILITY

An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.

Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.

Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it, permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George Washington's book of moral and social codes, this novel documents with breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.

An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn’t seem more familiar with his characters or territory.

Pub Date: July 25, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011

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WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.

Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

Pub Date: July 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013

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