A first novel that tells—solemnly if captivatingly—of a budding artist who seeks love and fulfillment despite her ignominious beginnings. She's not like other girls. At college in the early 60's, Lily Beach reveals a tragic sensibility in her dark eyes and in her clothes, ``always black or the color of bruises,'' that set her apart from her blond, sweater-setted classmates in the Art Department of the University of Iowa. Her seductive gloom, along with a compulsive need for sex that she secretly fears, attracts some strange ducks to her bed—Ted, an engineer incapable of expressing emotion; Will Sternhagen, a son of divorce unable to commit himself; and Andre Pulaski, a Paraguayan printmaker more than twice her age who chastely worships her and finally asks only to serve as her guardian angel. Lily has real talent but feels no particular need to fulfill it; she's more concerned with shaking free of the guilt caused by her mother's suicide the day after Lily told her her stepfather had tried to rape her. Therefore she drifts—first into a job with a Chicago ad agency, then into marriage to Ted, motherhood, and an empty suburban life on the sidelines of the swinging Sixties. Fortunately, though, throughout this overweight, dissatisfied part of her life, Lily's former admirers have not forgotten her. Will returns to help free her from her stultifying marriage, and Pulaski appears to reveal himself as the lover she was meant for—mere hours before his tragic death. In the end, Lily finds herself without a man (but with two children), picking up a paintbrush and dreaming of a new life lived on her own unfettered terms. Fields's prose can lack humor at the worst of times, but her portrait of the artist as a young (and aging) woman offers both a satisfying story and food for feminist thought. Like Lily herself, a strangely addictive—and intriguing—first work of fiction.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-689-12176-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
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
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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