Podgy prose, bland characters, dated story from this ever-popular husband-and-wife team (A Certain Smile, 1999, etc.).
Troubled family, endless complications.
Sara Elliot was always the perfect one: first-born, straight-A student, bound for medical school, etc. But she gave up her dream three years ago, at 24, when a stroke left her mother infirm and speechless and Sara devoted her life to caring for her adolescent sisters, Carrie and Abby, and ten-year-old brother Doug, meanwhile sticking with her own thankless job of finding luxury housing for loudmouthed rich people who dress badly and condescend to her. Yet, selfless to a fault, Sara never complains, says anything rude or funny, or even asks the burning question that every put-upon soap-opera heroine must ask: When will it be my turn? Maybe never. Mack, her manic, self-absorbed, younger brother is back in town. Perhaps Sara will be forced to confront the flaws in his volatile character—once she gets a nutritious dinner on the table, coaxes her sibs to eat their vegetables and do their homework, and offers moral guidance, fresh bread, and words of wisdom to all. Yet a romantic heart still beats faintly in the steel bosom of this annoying female robot: Reuben, a handsome, rich, also perfect client, seems to be single. But, wait! Is that a vengeful, money-hungry wife in his closet, claiming that Reuben’s bestial sexual demands forced her to have abortions? Sara would cry, if she weren’t a robot. The march of the subplots begins (cue the mighty Wurlitzer). Mack throws a tantrum in the nursing home where his addled mother languishes and explains why he’s so messed up before his dreams of glory make him easy prey for a cigar-chomping, casino-building monster, another of Sara’s clients. Reuben’s wife decides to accept a few zillion dollars, thus freeing Reuben to buy a cool, minimalist loft in New York. But it’s not a real home, Sara frets . . . . Happy ending, rife with platitudes, and it’s a wrap.
Podgy prose, bland characters, dated story from this ever-popular husband-and-wife team (A Certain Smile, 1999, etc.).Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059929-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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