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THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

Name: THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
Author: Kent Nelson
ISBN: 0-87905-398-4

STORIES

by Kent Nelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1991

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Like his novel Language in the Blood (above), Nelson's second collection (The Tennis Player, 1977) is strong on place, especially the American Southwest. The best of the 13 stories here are heartbreakers about people who learn to understand that the world is not circumscribed by their prejudices or limitations. In ``Learning to Dream,'' Rose, unable to dream, decides to do something about it without telling husband Henry. She sees a doctor, learns sign language, opens her horizons, and, most importantly, spends a great deal of secretive time at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, sitting before a Goya canvas (``She was overjoyed that her own small existence was so blessed''). This kind of quiet epiphany is typical, but Nelson seldom overplays his hand. Of the Southwest stories, ``The Spirits of Animals'' brings together a motley group who go bowhunting for antelope; the narrator accepts an Indian woman's decision to clap her hands at a crucial moment, scaring off a potential kill, and then mediates a violent confrontation between the same woman and Wayne, who is ``interested in killing something.'' Without pressing his point, Nelson brings to bear both a delicate sense of interaction between disparate personalities and the seductiveness of a Native American meshing with nature. Likewise, in ``Yellow Flowers,'' a couple in the Boston suburbs panic when their son Davis, only eight, begins to disappear regularly from school. The parents follow the boy and discover that he likes to take flowers to a church and sit in a pew—this moment, with which the father sympathizes, makes the story. Most of these pieces work that way, at a slant, so that situation and setting are integral to character. A fine collection, as outstanding and various as Christopher Tilghman's acclaimed In a Father's Place.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-87905-398-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
LAND THAT MOVES, LAND THAT STANDS STILL
by Kent Nelson

- BOOK REVIEW
TOWARD THE SUN
by Kent Nelson

- BOOK REVIEW
LANGUAGE IN THE BLOOD
by Kent Nelson

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

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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'SALEM'S LOT

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 1975

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A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is. King presents us with the riddle of a small Maine town that has been deserted overnight. Where did all the down-Easters go? Matter of fact, they're still there but they only get up at sundown. . . for a warm drink. . . .Ben Mears, a novelist, returns to Salem's Lot (pop. 1319), the hometown he hasn't seen since he was four years old, where he falls for a young painter who admires his books (what happens to her shouldn't happen to a Martian). Odd things are manifested. Someone rents the ghastly old Marsten mansion, closed since a horrible double murder-suicide in 1939; a dog is found impaled on a spiked fence; a healthy boy dies of anemia in one week and his brother vanishes. Ben displays tremendous calm considering that you're left to face a corpse that sits up after an autopsy and sinks its fangs into the coroner's neck. . . . Vampirism, necrophilia, et dreadful alia rather overplayed by the author of Carrie (1974).