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AMONG US WOMEN

Name: AMONG US WOMEN
Author: Joan Lerner
ISBN: 978-1439228807

by Joan Lerner ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2010

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Three women survive love and loss in Lerner’s debut novel, set in the tumultuous years from 1987 to 1992.

In alternating chapters, Lerner presents the interconnected stories of Rose, Jane and Eva. Rose, a lapsed Catholic who, at 58, deals with her mixed emotions regarding the death of her husband and her daughter’s unwanted pregnancy. Jane, meanwhile, reels from her husband’s shocking announcement soon after she finds that she’s pregnant for the first time at 37. In turn, African-American Eva, 38, admits her affair with a white married man. The narrative quickly reveals the connections among these three very different women; college friends Jane and Eva are partners at an interior design firm in Sag Harbor, and Rose meets Jane at the firm while seeking items to use in her work creating miniature houses. Eventually Rose convinces Jane to join her in protesting the abortions occurring at a local women’s clinic—one Eva designed. Throughout, the women struggle with their relationships with their husbands and boyfriends, as well as their personal views on religion, women’s rights and fertility. While the trio’s heated conflicts and emotional turmoil generally ring true, at times the plot feels overstuffed, with the inclusion of so many touchstones of the era—HIV/AIDS, in vitro pregnancy, abortion, sexual harassment—squeezed into the pages. Packed with realistic dialogue, minimal descriptions and present-tense narration, the book reads more like a screenplay than a novel, which underscores its drama. One notable exception to the normally staccato prose is the description of Rose’s home studio, which Lerner lovingly details. The periodic mentions of news events such as the Challenger explosion and the Anita Hill hearings help ground the novel solidly in its time period, along with smaller events, such as Jane not allowing someone with AIDS to hug her child because of the fear of infection. Unfortunately, it’s not until the last third of the book, when a serious life-and-death situation causes the women to act and not just react, that the novel begins to feel cohesive and compelling. An overwrought tale steeped in the major feminist concerns of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Pub Date: June 21, 2010

ISBN: 978-1439228807

Page Count: 361

Publisher: BookSurge

Review Posted Online: March 9, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.