In this British debut, a convincing character has an unconvincing affair. The gimmick: Said character is very pregnant. Presumably intended to be shocking, the scenes of narrator Susan's pregnant extramarital sex are on the whole less accomplished than her imaginings of her cruel father's own unhappy upbringing. The novel opens just after her father has gassed himself to death with carbon monoxide and, as a final divisive act, left his entire inheritance to daughter Penny, excluding her sisters, Susan and Sara. Susan, it becomes clear, has been moving somnolently through life with her dunderhead husband, Alistair, and only when she is close to giving birth does she come alive, through an affair with an American artist named Lenny. At the same time, she begins to have visions of the ghost of a small boy wandering through her London home. He turns out to be her father, who had suffered at the hands of his mother, a bizarre woman who once maliciously served Susan and her sisters pancakes with pins in them. These glimpses of the past are the strongest sections here, even though they occasionally go too far and make the characters unpalatable rather than interestingly gruesome. Other passages are less successful. A description of how Susan finds Alistair's solidity comforting during their courtship is sharp with detail, nicely revealing how her father's strange ways have conditioned her, but her accidental pregnancy is dismissed in a sentence: ``And that was it, the end of freedom and choice.'' Likewise, the cuckolded Alistair and the slightly pretentious Lenny are colorless compared to Susan's father and grandmother. The choppy structure serves the subject well, however. Although her narration is intensely self-focused, Susan never becomes whiny or self-pitying about her dismal existence, and Myerson's depiction of her pregnancy is full of lifelike discomfort. Patchy, but more successful than most takes on dysfunctional family life (and afterlife). (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-47506-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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
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
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