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THE ART OF LIVING AND OTHER STORIES

Name: THE ART OF LIVING AND OTHER STORIES
Author: John Gardner
ISBN: 0679723501

by John Gardner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1981

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Gardner's first short-fiction collection since The King's Indian (1974) offers ten highly polished stories—which, though generally unaffecting, do represent the range of his narrative imperatives. Here, as always, is Gardner-as-artist-philosopher, with clanging, derivative parables on the moral conflicts of the artist: the strained yet seductive title story, about a speech-making restaurant cook ("I'm an artist, you understand that? What's an artist? . . . An artist is a man who makes a covenant with tradition," etc.) whose esthetic need to cook a Vietnamese dog dish repels, then convinces the community; "The Problems of Art," an arch nouveau-Poe fable about a book-surrounded fellow seeing visions in his library ("I saw Ahab. . . who argued with Boswell's Dr. Johnson, boringly") while evading real-life demands (his father in the asylum); and the interminable "Vlemk the Box-Painter"—which stacks up no less than three conflicted artists, along with questions of reality (a painted face so real it talks), artistic honesty ("Is it our business to set down lies, or are we here to tell the Truth. . . ?"), inner and outer beauty. . . plus a fairy-tale format. Rather less numbing, though equally didactic and artist-centered, are Gardner's more realistic moral fables: in "Redemption," a boy, guilt-ridden over the accidental tractor-death of his brother, is drawn to music; in "Nimram," a world-famous conductor's complacency is shaken by an encounter with a terminally ill teenager. And Gardner comes closest to direct emotional appeal with two reminiscence-based stories (though again about art)—a dance school in 1940s St. Louis, a Welsh group-sing in upstate N.Y.—and with "The Joy of the Just": a folksy-comic yarn about the outlandish revenge of old Aunt Ella Reikert, who can't get the preacher to admit that his wife ran Aunt Ella off the road. True, none of these tales is less than skillful: Gardner's prose is smooth, musical, elaborate. But in most of them he seems to be writing far too much for his fellow artists, far too little for the world outside the ivory tower.

Pub Date: May 1, 1981

ISBN: 0679723501

Page Count: 330

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ON WRITERS AND WRITING
by John Gardner

- BOOK REVIEW
STILLNESS AND SHADOWS
by John Gardner

- BOOK REVIEW
GILGAMESH
translated by John R. Maier & edited by John Gardner

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

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

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.