Refreshingly original writing with a delightfully orchestrated twist.
In Story’s (Problems of Translation, 2015) second novel, several outsiders try to outrun their pasts.
In 1971, Clayton Poole is a 34-year-old journalist for the Rolling Hills Reporter newspaper in Montana. In the paper’s “morgue” of articles from other news outlets, he’s startled by a recent piece about a woman in Washington state who confesses to killing her estranged husband with a gun that a “mysterious stranger” gave to her. This discovery leads him to call an emergency meeting with his editor, but the exact reason for his excitement isn’t immediately revealed. In 1965, Rusty Thomas meets a waitress named Maddie in a diner at the limits of Southeast City, Washington. He presents her with a pair of nylons that he won in a radio contest. Their ensuing relationship is troubled by the specter of Maddy’s past. In 1952, Travis Mackey is a 15-year-old youth who lives with his father, the caretaker of a shutdown gypsum mine in the Coast Range in California. Ever since his mother’s untimely death, his dad has taken to beating him regularly. One day, on a deserted country road, he looks up and sees a condor, and he imagines it swooping down to sink its talons into the old man. Not long afterward, a stranger appears at the mine toting a gun. The narrative spans almost seven decades, beginning in 1952 and concluding in 2018, but author Story proves to be a master of the slow reveal, gradually pulling away the veil that shrouds a secret that’s central to the plot. He does so by sharing details of his characters only when readers truly need to know them, and not before. Regarding Rusty, Story writes laconically, “Though he lived close to the heart of the town, near the college, he was customarily drawn to peripheries.” Such revelations lead to further questions; for instance, is Rusty drawn to peripheries because he has something to hide? The novel’s epilogue is somewhat long-winded, unnecessarily tying up every loose end. Otherwise, though, this is a smartly conceived, beguiling tale that few readers will forget.
Refreshingly original writing with a delightfully orchestrated twist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9862382-2-2
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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