Despite featuring an outsider who’s a bit too removed, this book delivers a fast-paced, energetic tale resonating with...
In this novel, a new international student at a commuter college in Ohio ignites questions of racism, nationalism, and history for a small town.
Fresh from the Paris suburbs, Azza Amari arrives at Northwestern Ohio State College wearing a hijab and holding a bag containing $97,872. “It is my out-of-state tuition, yes?” she responds to the registrar’s shock. The Tunisian-born refugee has already bought into a vision of the classic American college experience. But instead of offering a dorm, programs, and mixers, the small commuter college in Fremont struggles to accommodate her—eventually renting a cheap motel room and having the assistant registrar’s teenage son, Kip Beckelhymer, drive her around in his blue hatchback. Azza becomes intrigued by Kip’s love of history, in particular his obsession with a missing artifact from the local museum: a 19th-century plaster of Paris European pear. Azza agrees to help him and his friend Ryan Langham on their treasure hunts if the boys teach her how to drive. As the unlikely friendship develops, Azza learns more about Kip’s failed romance while the boys have their eyes opened to Islam and the world outside Fremont. Meanwhile, others in the town begin to close ranks, and dangerous clouds of racism and nationalism settle over the campus. Womack (Playing the Angel, 2013) has created a fun, fish-out-of-water tale with heavy implications about today’s world. He has carefully drawn, realistic small-town figures—thanks to sharp dialogue from Kip and Ry especially—to show how quickly open minds can close, building to an emotional and incensing conclusion. Azza’s overly polite, quizzical nature provides plenty of bright, comedic moments, but her characterization overall is perplexing. Her utter naiveté about bank accounts and universities seems to reinforce stereotypes rather than undo them. It would make more sense for Azza to be from a tiny, isolated village rather than the mean streets of a global, Western city—and the whole story would greatly benefit from its central figure being worldlier.
Despite featuring an outsider who’s a bit too removed, this book delivers a fast-paced, energetic tale resonating with today’s most troubling and important issues.Pub Date: May 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68433-264-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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