Addonizio fondly indulges her insightful babies, bad mothers and troubled young women, but fails to convince readers that...
Can two problem-laden women salvage their futures?
Maternal damage looms large in this first novel, a lightweight comedy set in Long Beach, Calif., by poet Addonizio (In a Box Called Pleasure: Stories, 1999, etc.). Diana McBride’s obsessive/compulsive disorder was simultaneously overlooked and intensified by her dipsomaniac, promiscuous mother, who forced Diana into beauty pageants as a child. Jamie Ramirez gave birth at 17 because her mother is an inconsistent feminist Catholic who tolerates contraception but bans abortion. Jamie and Diana’s paths cross at a baby store called Teddy’s World, the latest place of employment in Diana’s checkered career. Whenever her rituals and countings and washings become overwhelming, she moves on in hopes of a fresh start. Husband Tim has also opted for a fresh start, driven away by rules like, “Shower after emptying the trash.” An unpromising mother herself, Jamie chooses to keep baby Stella rather than give her up for adoption, unaware that the child is a marvel whose opinions and observations begin while she is still in the womb. “Babyhood is kind of confining, so far,” Stella observes, and unfortunately this Look Who’s Talking characterization is merely the most ill-judged aspect of a novel more intent on cozy conclusions than developing its one-note characters. The pace accelerates as if suddenly turbo-charged on the night of Jamie’s 18th birthday, when she picks up a boy, drops acid and takes a plane to New York. Stella abruptly falls mortally ill and begins communing with the dead wife of Anthony, a stranger who assisted at Stella’s birth and who now reappears in a bar. Diana sets aside her obsessions to save Stella, earning Anthony’s healing affections. Jamie rushes back to shoulder her burdens, and a tide of forgiveness floats everyone’s boat.
Addonizio fondly indulges her insightful babies, bad mothers and troubled young women, but fails to convince readers that they should do the same.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-7182-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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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