bookshelf

THANKSGIVING BREAKFAST

Name: THANKSGIVING BREAKFAST
Author: John Fitzgerald
ISBN: 978-1479168224

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN

by John Fitzgerald ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 10, 2012

A conversational novel, full of historical details, which struggles to find its narrative voice.

bookshelf

A group of high-school friends navigates the turbulent ’60s and the decades that follow in this debut novel of small-town America.

The story’s six main characters represent classic types: the high school sweethearts who don’t go to college and marry young, the beatnik who believes that music can save the world, the boy who goes into the military willing to die for his country, the young man in love and the unattainable girl he worships. They all reunite each year for breakfast on Thanksgiving Day—meetings that consist of far more drinking than eating—and share their experiences. Through conversation they reveal their shifting ideologies, their professional aspirations, their struggles with relationships, their small victories and betrayals. They also discuss current events, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the advent of Viagra, depicting a nation suffering the same growing pains as they are. But while the novel’s multitude of characters gives it scope, its use of a third-person omniscient narrator leaves readers a bit adrift in the sea of discussion, unable to develop strong bonds with the characters. Alex Flynn emerges early as the potential protagonist, as his relationship with Nancy, an impeccable Christian girl with missionary aspirations, is the novel’s most interesting dynamic. But readers get to know Alex and the other characters mainly through expository dialogue and never get full access to their interior lives. The novel’s strength is in its nostalgia; readers will likely feel as if they are overhearing exchanges from decades past.

A conversational novel, full of historical details, which struggles to find its narrative voice.

Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2012

ISBN: 978-1479168224

Page Count: 492

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

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.