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ANNOTATIONS

Name: ANNOTATIONS
Author: John Keene
ISBN: 0-8112-1304-8

by John Keene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1995

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Keene debuts in fiction with a dense, intelligent, poetic, highly allusive word-tapestry that takes on subjects low and high, brings up scoopfuls of history, theorizes endlessly—and tells the story of a boy growing up black in St. Louis, beginning with his birth in 1965 and ending as he heads for Harvard. An easy read it isn't, however, as suggested even by the titles of its short, prose-poem-like ``chapters''—``Signs, Scenes, a Psychic Trail of Assignations,'' for example, or ``Permanence or Evanescence, the Process of the Real.'' Yet the book does have an ongoing logic and narrative as an inner-city childhood is followed by a move to the suburbs, and as the nameless boy gradually becomes aware of his sexuality, intellect, and his interest in literature and poetry. Of daily life, there are siblings, the changing seasons, school and parents, a grandfather who grows vegetables, a great-aunt who expects good manners and decorum. The boy himself is called a sissy, is ridiculed for getting good grades, is ``chosen . . . last for any sport requiring aggression,'' and yet he's also the subject of his own grown and golden-tongued biographer, who says of him that ``His heart is a grotto bearing witness to other's kindnesses,'' or who mentions ``The kitchen of his body in which the fires of history were blazing.'' The history blazing inside is the history of region, race, self, and nation, and Keene summons up all, though briefly and always allusively. ``Our generation possesses only a cursory sense of the world that our ancestors braved,'' he declares, ``though the burdens of history bear unmovably upon us.'' As for his own method of pastiche, disjunction, and fleeting detail: ``The effect is essentially novelistic, though its fictiveness remains another matter.'' Tiny, and filled with enormous themes: a tour de force of intelligence, wordsmithing, and passion, with only a few notes slightly flat, and only now and then.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1995

ISBN: 0-8112-1304-8

Page Count: 96

Publisher: New Directions

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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.