Leisurely paced and earnestly revealing, this proper, well-proportioned book memorializes the Yardleys, the author's own family, re-creating the family history by drawing on personal memory and the extensive contents of a file his parents kept for 50 years. Yardley's father Bill was a girls' school headmaster who studied for the ministry to further his academic career; crusty, disciplined, and well-mannered, he had aristocratic pretensions but also cared deeply about books and the girls of Chatham Hall. Helen, the author's mother, was in Bennington's first graduating class; marrying soon after, she apparently shelved plans for an art career to become the headmaster's wife and raise four children, acknowledging some bitterness over the choice only late in life. The two shared a love of fine things—some pieces of furniture seem like beloved members of the family—and a continuing recognition of their silver-plated circumstances: never having quite enough money, beholden to people who had much more. Yardley justly likens them, especially his father's clan, to "characters from a Marquand novel," for in their aspirations and pretenses, their coded public behaviors and more relaxed private styles, their strongly expressed convictions and old prejudices, they indeed resemble that novelist's genteel WASP creations. Appreciating the subtleties and contradictions in their personalities, Yardley is able to separate small posturings and tiresome quirks from true qualities of character, all the while remembering his own unique position here—an insider trading on family stock. Traces of his varied legacy are apparent in his handling of certain subjects, such as sickness or divorce, as well as in the sure cadences of his formal, fluent prose. Although much of this narrative is diverting—the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic (1981) deftly captures habits and attitudes—it has weaknesses that even his kind of people won't value: too much emphasis on school rituals and the family finances especially. As a record of a particular way of life, however, it is both faithful and emblematic.
Pub Date: March 1, 1989
ISBN: 1-55584-174-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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