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WATERLOO

Name: WATERLOO
Author: Karen Olsson
ISBN: 0-374-28626-4

by Karen Olsson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 2005

A debut to be enjoyed by idealists everywhere, and one bound to get Austin locals gossiping.

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Acid-sweet tale of life, love and politics in slackerville.

Texas Monthly writer Olsson’s wry first novel is set in a lightly fictionalized Austin, Texas, a town disoriented by the tech boom. Centered on the tight-knit political scene (it reads like a post-script to Billy Brammer’s The Gay Place), Olsson’s characters cross paths as they struggle fitfully toward action through a haze of heat, alcohol and compromised ideals. Nick Lasseter, a reporter for the no-longer-independent Weekly, is sunk in a torpor exacerbated by the paper’s new “serve the consumer” attitude and his ex-girlfriend’s engagement. His uncle, Bones Lasseter, is an alcoholic wreck of a wily lobbyist who misses the ’70s, when cheap rent, drugs and ideals were easily attainable. Distracted by her affair with the dimwitted but handsome gubernatorial candidate, Republican freshman legislator Beverly Flintic unwittingly sponsors a bill written by a national land developer and innocently breaks with the party line. An ambitious black woman, Andrea Carter is just putting in her time among the white liberals at the daily paper, but finds herself drawn to Nick’s world of drinking, music and eccentricity when they go on a few dates. (Latinos, by the way, are oddly absent from Waterloo.) Andrea is haunted by her father’s Waterloo legacy as a desegregationist and employee of congressman William Sabert, whose death opens the novel. Mourned as one of the last great liberals, Sabert is really a moderate who drifted into greatness. Indeed, the importance and danger of drift, mess, moderation and nostalgia is Olsson’s true subject—and a strength and weakness of the novel. Olsson’s narrative lines touch, but do not cohere. Important things happen, but the action seems deliberately muted, belated, offstage. Ultimately, however, Olsson’s dry irony, nuanced observations and enjoyably moody atmosphere build into a sophisticated portrait of her hometown.

A debut to be enjoyed by idealists everywhere, and one bound to get Austin locals gossiping.

Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2005

ISBN: 0-374-28626-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WEIL CONJECTURES
by Karen Olsson

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL THE HOUSES
by Karen Olsson

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.