Pleasant reading for golfers, slim pickings for everyone else.
There’s a doomed romance and a life-lesson for a teenager in Coyne’s ninth novel, but the game’s the thing, with a hole-by-hole analysis of two rounds of golf.
It’s the summer of 1946, and 14-year-old Jack Handley is feeling lost. His father was killed late in World War II, and his mother has lost the will to live. The two reside on a small dairy farm outside Chicago, with Jack’s big sister. Jack is a first-rate caddie at the nearby golf club, where the assistant pro, charming, happy-go-lucky 20-year-old Matt Richardson, is like his big brother. Matt is beginning a romance with Sarah DuPree, daughter of the club president, who does not consider the hired help to be eligible in-law material, so Matt passes messages to Sarah through Jack, his go-between. In an awkward frame device, an elderly Jack returns to the club years later to talk about his book on Ben Hogan and that summer of ’46. At the time, Hogan burned as bright as Tiger Woods does today, so it’s a big thrill for Jack when Hogan lets him caddie for him during a practice round. The last nine holes Hogan plays against Matt. (Thanks to the transparency of the author’s prose, even a non-golfer who wouldn’t know a birdie from a bogey will catch his drift, though the detail can be overwhelming.) The second game to be dissected is the first round of the Chicago Open, for which boy-wonder Matt has qualified. There had been some question whether Jack would caddie for Hogan or Matt, but Hogan the guru teaches Jack about loyalty and responsibility; no question, he must caddie for Matt, who will be the surprise winner, setting the course record. He won’t win his girl, though. Sarah’s father foils their planned elopement and there’s a fatal accident and perfunctory wrap-up, in stark contrast to the leisurely description of the games.
Pleasant reading for golfers, slim pickings for everyone else.Pub Date: May 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35523-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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