It’s a book balanced on thin devices, but Blau is almost as unsparing about Lexie as she is with the other characters, and...
If the protagonist of Blau’s previous novel (The Wonder Bread Summer, 2013, etc.) saved all her bad decision-making for adulthood, she might look like the titular Lexie.
The prologue shows readers exactly where they’re headed: Lexie James, on a booze-and-Klonopin bender, is discovered sleeping in her lover’s marital bed. While this opening drama will rope audiences in quickly, Blau’s hand-tipping ruins a lot of chances for potential suspense. Or possibly not, since the cheating relationship at the heart of the novel is so textbook ill-fated that it would be hard to sympathize with Lexie’s runaway passion in either case. Lexie is, ironically (though the irony is lost on her), a counselor for privileged high schoolers at a ritzy boarding school in Massachusetts, and her lover is one of the lead benefactors of the school, Daniel Waite. Besides being a skilled adulterer, Daniel is also the father of Lexie’s favorite student, making for a very tangled web. Before she meets him, it seems that Lexie finally has it made with her sweet job, sweet fiance (who handcrafts guitars for a living), and physical distance from her disastrous childhood in California. Frequent dips into Lexie’s past reveal an uninvolved-then-gone father and a self-involved career waitress mother who mocks Lexie for any achievement and kicks her out of the house when she's 15 to make room for a new boyfriend. But the real trouble with Lexie is that she doesn’t quite add up. Too much time is spent on the past with not enough bearing on the present. Tidbits are always being thrown out about her—her childhood sucked, she’s vain, she lets her phone’s Yahtzee app make decisions for her—without ever harmonizing into a realized character. Pushed to a bigger extreme, the novel might have hit a more humorous note.
It’s a book balanced on thin devices, but Blau is almost as unsparing about Lexie as she is with the other characters, and her pacing is good. Anyone in the market for discount thrills will find them here.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-241645-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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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