With a light touch and a simple style, British writer Fforde offers a slight but spirited first novel of three English roses who blossom when they strike out on their own—and finally meet the right men. Housecleaning becomes a path to romance in modern London as the lives and futures of three floundering but well-bred young Englishwomen intersect at a sham cleaning agency. Sally Bliss, a beauty and would-be actress, is trapped in a lose-lose relationship with a snooty, demanding journalist named Piers. Harriet Devonshire, an artist by nature and the mother of ten-year-old illegitimate Matthew, ran away from her controlling great- grandparents when they sent Matthew to boarding school and consequently forbade Harriet to have any contact with him. Spunky, determined, independent May Sargent is living aboard The Rose Revived, a former boyfriend's canal boat, but now she's out of money and too proud to borrow from her family. If she can't pay the harbor master soon, she'll lose the only thing she has: her home. All three women show up at ``Slimeball'' Slater's office in response to an advertisement for cleaners; all three are hired on the spot and sign contracts without reading them—a foolish move that leaves them, literally, in the same boat when they realize that Slater's up to no good. Once the women set out on their initial assignments, though, it's not just trouble they're in for- -genuine friendship is only the first of many benefits to come. With the help of Hugh Buckfast, an attorney May meets at a dinner party she's forced to cater, Quality Cleaners leads to Cleaning Undertaken, a self-conceived, self-run enterprise; for Sally, Harriet, and especially May, running a business leads to self- sufficiency, well-lit career paths, and lasting love. No complex twists or turns, no surprises, just good, clean (emphasis on the latter), old-fashioned fun.
Pub Date: March 13, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14040-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.
Walker (In Love and Trouble, Meridian) has set herself the task of an epistolary novel—and she scores strongly with it.
The time is in the Thirties; a young, black, Southern woman named Celie is the primary correspondent (God being her usual addressee); and the life described in her letters is one of almost impossible grimness. While young, Celie is raped by a stepfather. (Even worse, she believes him to be her real father.) She's made to bear two children that are then taken away from her. She's married off without her consent to an older man, Albert, who'd rather have Celie's sister Nettie—and, by sacrificing her body to Albert without love or feeling, Celie saves her sister, making it possible for her to escape: soon Nettle goes to Africa to work as a Christian missionary. Eventually, then, halfway through the book, as Celie's sub-literate dialect letters to God continue to mount (eventually achieving the naturalness and intensity of music, equal in beauty to Eudora Welty's early dialect stories), letters from Nettie in Africa begin to arrive. But Celie doesn't see them—because Albert holds them back from her. And it's only when Celie finds an unlikely redeemer—Albert's blues-singer lover Shug Avery—that her isolation ends: Shug takes Celie under her wing, becomes Celie's lover as well as Albert's; Shug's strength and expansiveness and wisdom finally free up Nettie's letters—thus granting poor Celie a tangible life in the now (Shug's love, encouragement) as well as a family life, a past (Nettie's letters). Walker fashions this book beautifully—with each of Celie's letters slowly adding to her independence (the implicit feminism won't surprise Walker's readers), with each letter deepening the rich, almost folk-tale-ish sense of story here. And, like an inverted pyramid, the novel thus builds itself up broadeningly while balanced on the frailest imaginable single point: the indestructibility—and battered-ness—of love.
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.Pub Date: June 28, 1982
ISBN: 0151191549
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing...
The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.).
Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in “Pharmacy,” which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she’s not exactly patient with shy young people—or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in “Incoming Tide” with the news that her father, like Kevin’s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in “Starving,” though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout’s rueful tales. The Kitteridges’ son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn’t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive’s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in “Winter Concert” has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout’s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life’s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, “It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
PERSPECTIVES
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