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HUMMINGBIRDS

Name: HUMMINGBIRDS
Author: Joshua Gaylord
ISBN: 978-0-06-176901-6

by Joshua Gaylord ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2009

A very grown-up novel about adolescence and the folly of adults, by an impressive new voice in American fiction.

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In Gaylord’s winning debut, teenage girls and their male teachers vie for power at a Manhattan prep school.

Leo Binhammer, the only man in the English department at the Carmine-Casey School for Girls, luxuriates in his roles as brooding hero to the students, preening pet of the female faculty. He’s unsettled by the arrival of charismatic new English teacher Ted Hughes. It’s short for Theodore, not Edward like the famous poet, but Leo resents someone “who would use the nickname Ted, knowing…what literary baggage it carries.” Leo’s not just angry because this interloper will be his rival for the girl’s swooning devotion; he also knows that Ted slept with his wife, Sarah Lewis, a few years ago at a conference. Although Leo has reconciled with Sarah, he’s obsessed with the man who made him a cuckold, at first despising Ted, then befriending him. They form a boyish camaraderie of witty insults, but Leo keeps his wife’s identity a secret from Ted and his new comrade a secret from Sarah. As their complicated relationship plays out through the school year, the seniors grapple with the prospect of life after Carmine-Casey. Head girls Dixie Doyle (ironically sporting pigtails and a lollypop) and Liz Warren (brilliant and bespectacled) are extra antsy, each vaguely aware that her special status is a gilded construct that may not survive outside these hallowed halls. The author, himself a teacher at a Manhattan prep school, is a keen observer of this privileged world. He captures Ted’s and Leo’s point of view in such lush language (an auditorium “full of the glowing bodies of ridiculous virgins,” elsewhere described by Ted as “adorable little bundles of outrage”) that readers might overlook his shrewd, subtle presentation of the students.

A very grown-up novel about adolescence and the folly of adults, by an impressive new voice in American fiction.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-06-176901-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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...

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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

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.