A charmingly perceptive follow-up that should appeal to both teenagers and adults.
This sequel to Luddy’s debut novel (Spelldown, 2008) continues the story of a young woman dealing with family, first love and the urge to escape her small South Carolina hometown in the early 1970s.
Seventeen-year-old Karlene Bridges can’t wait to get out of Red Clover. Her high school career is almost over, and she has a good shot at scholarships at several colleges, including Smith, the alma mater of her mentor and confidante, Mrs. Harrison. Unfortunately, Mrs. Harrison and her family are about to leave town. She’s not the only one leaving: Karlene’s love interest, Billy Ray Jenkins, is off serving in the Navy, and her other male friend, Spencer Randall, who she notices is looking mighty handsome lately, was just drafted. In fact, all the other boys in Red Clover are about to go off to Vietnam or have already died there. Karlene’s only respite from her loneliness lies in the idea of getting out of Red Clover. As a girl bordering on adulthood, she explores the ideas of sex and sexuality while following a deeply feminist philosophy. She’s happy that her older sister is experiencing her first pregnancy, but privately she thinks, “[y]ou’d think Gloria Jean was incubating the New Messiah, the way she and Mama go on about it.” And although her friends, such as Spencer’s sister, Lucinda, eagerly delve into romantic encounters, Karlene realizes the importance of protecting herself from an early or unplanned pregnancy; she takes to heart Mrs. Harrison’s admonition that “making love is dangerous for a woman, more so than for a man.” References to popular music, films and events of the time help illustrate the story’s themes, although younger readers may not immediately recognize them all. Luddy’s quick-witted, perceptive dialogue (“Sometimes lyrics brood in my heart. Sometimes they pop into my brain, but this one started in my epidermis”) breathes life into Karlene’s precocious personality. Anyone who’s experienced the restlessness of young adulthood will identify with Karlene’s yearning to leave her small town behind. However, Red Clover also seems to be the kind of place to which Karlene will happily return someday. Fans of Luddy’s first novel will be glad to have that opportunity here.
A charmingly perceptive follow-up that should appeal to both teenagers and adults.Pub Date: April 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991551804
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Backbone Books
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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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