The message isn't lost on the reader, but it's shrouded in oppressively plangent (though often quite beautiful) prose so...
A complex history of secrecy and grief is gradually revealed in this painstakingly layered, deliberately muted first novel, from the author of Where She Went (stories: 1998).
At the outset it seems to be the story of narrator Ellen Rock's unspoken love for her older cousin Randall Jewell, a charming, intellectually curious boy who had shared his personal secrets with her—and perished during WWII on Iwo Jima, bequeathing to Ellen his diary and an illustrated volume describing the eponymous Japanese gardens (the subject of petitions that their pristine beauty be spared by Allied bombers). But the novel wanders, as Ellen searches both her own past and the histories of other people whose experiences impinge on or influence her own. Her older sister Rita dies young, after marrying a traumatized war veteran; and Ellen's own husband Henry, who breaks down and enters a V.A. hospital, fades from her life almost as quickly as he had (accidentally, as it happens) entered it. Her uncle Sterling (Randall's father) importunes Ellen to "Tell me about . . . my son," all but paralyzed by a guilty secret that mocks a life of outward rectitude. And Randall's legacy wounds Ellen as severely as do her own losses: She discovers not only that during the Civil War the Jewells' stately home had been a haven for runaway slaves, but that it had also been the site of horrendous injustices, including an embittered freeman's defiant act of vengeance. The novel's separate parts don't quite cohere formally, but the nature of their interconnection is suggested by this telling phrase from Randall's book: "Tucked within the gardens of Kyoto is a shrine to unborn children, to lost children, to children too soon dead."
The message isn't lost on the reader, but it's shrouded in oppressively plangent (though often quite beautiful) prose so concentrated on mourning for this story's numerous dead and gone that it disallows any contrary experience or emotion, or even a breath of air. Not negligible by any means, but awfully bleak and monotonous.Pub Date: April 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-86948-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
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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