The author best known for her 1975 novel, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, again uses an actual murder case as inspiration for her fiction, this time in a masterful dissection of a young girl's tortured journey from mother-love to matricide. Anita Stern runs away from home when she's 16 and gives birth to her first child, out of wedlock, when she's 22. The ever- restless Anita manages to stay put for daughter Madeleine's first five years, but then the itch to wander takes hold of her again. She eventually settles in Santa Fe, moving in with a drug-dazed hippie who owns an old adobe house on Canyon Road. Demonstrating her practical brilliance, Anita soon turns the house into the road's largest art gallery; demonstrating her personal irresponsibility, she conceives a child with the hippie. But Anita loves babies. In fact, her adoration for baby Billy so completely eclipses her feelings for Madeleine that she often seems to forget that she even has a daughter. As Madeleine grows older, becoming ever more earnest and responsible in a futile effort to regain her mother's love, the hard-drinking Anita's neglect escalates to negligence (she stays out all night, or has sex in Madeleine's presence) and even physical abuse. Scarred by her mother's cruelty and by loneliness (her own first love affair ends badly), and longing for some sense of security, Madeleine finds herself locked in her adolescence into a love-hate struggle with her terrible mother—longing to return to the happiness of infancy, loathing her own ``boring neediness,'' and counting the days until her escape to college. Unfortunately, the stresses in Anita's life come to a head before Madeleine can flee. In an alcoholic rage, she attacks her daughter with a broken tequila bottle, and in fighting back, Madeleine alters both their fates. Relentless, suspenseful, and absolutely captivating. Rarely has a toxic mother-daughter love story been so expertly and convincingly evoked. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48427-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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
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