Difficult, dark, and uncompromisingly fine.
A somber, haunting debut novel from Irish poet Hardie about a world-weary, financially desperate woman who seeks security for herself and her son by marrying an elderly Anglo-Irish farmer.
Born in Java of mixed parentage, cold-blooded, mercenary Hannie has always lived off men. But her looks are fading with middle age, and she’s penniless after her most recent failed marriage. So Hannie leaves Africa for England, where she meets and marries Ned, a former journalist and world traveler now retired to a farm in the Irish countryside of his youth. They enter marriage pragmatically: Ned wants a companion; Hannie needs financial support and a home for herself and 14-year-old Joss. But once ensconced on Ned’s farm, Hannie feels excruciatingly isolated and unhappy, while Ned is crushed by her unwillingness to reach out to his Anglo-Irish friends and family. To make matter worse, Joss (who arrives from Africa shortly after the marriage) is a deeply troubled boy, possibly psychopathic. Hannie senses the inexorable pull toward disaster as Joss spends more and more time with Ned’s tenant, a lovely and innocent would-be artist named Niamh. The author slowly and relentlessly probes her characters’ psyches: Hannie’s seeming amorality covers a deep sense of loyalty; Ned’s growing love for his wife collides with his sense of social duty; Joss is both unreachable and heartbreakingly needy. Notable among the equally complex cast of supporting characters is Ned’s housekeeper Mrs. Coady, Hannie’s unlikely soulmate, who understands maternal passion because she has lost a child of her own. Tensions build as secrets are half-revealed, but ultimately this elusive novel defies easy summary because so much of the plot occurs in the smallest details and between the lines. Hardie allows no sentimentality or easy conclusion. Despite the reader’s early assumptions about who is moral and who is not, in the end it is Hannie who must forgive Ned’s betrayal.
Difficult, dark, and uncompromisingly fine.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-07622-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
