A generally well-written narrative covering the less-frequently chartered years during which Hemingway first displayed...
Mooers (J.P., 2013, etc.) returns to historical fiction, this time following 19-year-old Ernest Hemingway, who comes home from war and struggles to readjust to life in the civilian world.
Working from a plethora of sources, including some Hemingway anthologies, Mooers reconstructs day-to-day details of the two years between Hemingway’s return to Oak Park, Illinois, after having been seriously injured in World War I, and his departure for Paris, where he would eventually become part of the Left Bank expat crowd of artists and writers. Still in pain from the leg injury he suffered while working as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, he came home with many of the 277 shell fragments embedded in his leg and groin, still “working their way up to the surface.” He also experienced frequent flashback memories of the explosion that almost cost him his life. Today, we might say he had PTSD. On top of this, he received a breakup letter from Agnes von Kurowsky, the nurse who tended to him in Italy and then became his lover. Depressed and rudderless, young Hemingway decided to devote himself primarily to fishing the rivers and streams of Walloon Lake near Petoskey, Michigan, site of their family summer home, christened Windemere by his mother. Encircled by a coterie of devoted friends, among whom he was a star, he regained his confidence (some might say arrogance) and embraced his status as a local war hero and fledgling writer. An adept stylistic chameleon, Mooers often approximates the cadence made famous by his subject. By Mooers’ own admission, there are “parts where I use the actual words spoken, the actual words written, or the actual scene as it happened,” so the text—with help from its 26-title bibliography, sans citations—becomes a sort of treasure hunt for Hemingway devotees looking to uncover the verifiable quotations. For the rest of us, it’s simply a solid story that conveys the uncertainties and the contrasting hubris of a young man wracked by memories of the war while on the cusp of a phenomenal literary career.
A generally well-written narrative covering the less-frequently chartered years during which Hemingway first displayed flashes of the man he’d become.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988648685
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Riverrun
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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