Putting a nosy neighbor in the position of narrating events she could neither witness nor learn about secondhand is the awkward device that launches this dark comedy about a troubled family, by the author of Island (1992). On the surface, the Arroways seem happy. When elderly Martha Bowker decides to fend off boredom by keeping an eye on them, however, she finds that appearances are deceiving. Father Pete, a ghostwriter, sees himself as weak and has turned to Robert Bly and Batman for strength; he drifts into a flirtation with a business associate about whom he has obsessive fantasies. Mother Liz cares for their three children, her schizophrenic sister Sherri, and her ailing father, but she has isolated herself emotionally since the death 11 years earlier of her daughter Maddy. Liz believes that a ghostly Maddy appears to her in the dark, but she keeps the visitations a secret from Pete, sure that he will try to prove they aren't real. Jake, Katie, and baby Brigit are healthy and growing. But 12-year-old Jake, who believes his father hates him, is convinced that he accidentally killed his sister and his mother lied to protect him. Katie has an invisible friend whom she refuses to give up and Pete refuses to acknowledge. Then Liz finds out about Pete's flirtation, and Pete discovers Liz's obsession with Maddy when he reads her diary. Martha, who has insinuated herself into the Arroway home, waits patiently for a denouement. When Sherri shares Jake's painful secret with the rest of the family, Pete and Liz are finally forced to face the problems arising from their distractions, and the Arroways have a chance of actually becoming the happy family they appear to be. Despite the clumsy narrative premise, Schweighardt looks at domestic problems with honesty and humor.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-877946-44-3
Page Count: 205
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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