An often engaging but overly introspective story of life and love across three generations.
In her debut novel, Robeson (English/Los Angeles Valley Coll.) describes a Greek-American woman’s search for personal and romantic fulfillment.
When she was a young girl, Thair Mylopoulos-Wright’s mother told her that humans were once conjoined to their perfect complement. But ever since Zeus separated us into two, she said, we’re all destined to search for our other half. Now, in her early 30s, Thair has a startling realization that she and her partner, while complacently happy, aren’t truly in love. This insight launches several years of soul-searching as she grapples with issues of compatibility and contentment. Her subsequent relationships challenge her assumptions and teach her about her own desires; a particular source of confusion comes from an emerging awareness that she’s not solely attracted to men. She seeks answers by transcribing her family’s history—writing short stories about her grandmother’s upbringing in Egypt and later life in Greece, and her mother’s transition from the Mediterranean to America—and these bittersweet recollections provide some of the most noteworthy material in the novel. Thair feels a strong connection to the Greek island of Kythnos, where she spent childhood summers with her grandmother; the peaceful, picturesque island serves as a contrast to her life as a busy Californian professor and offers a vivid backdrop for her reflections. Robeson makes her protagonist’s existential fretfulness about her future, and her feelings of uncertainty as she pursues a perfect romantic match, highly relatable. However, the novel spends too much time dwelling on narrator Thair’s internal struggles, and not enough time on external action to capture readers’ attention. When Thair explains that she’s “hoping my stories can entertain, maybe even help, but, mostly, my desire to write has always been to understand,” it feels as if this is the novel’s mission, as well—to untangle the main character’s thoughts concerning relationships, while giving secondary consideration to plot and pacing. Still, it’s likely that Thair’s narrative will resonate with readers who are confronting their own unpredictable futures. For others, however, her journey will seem pleasant but not revolutionary.
An often engaging but overly introspective story of life and love across three generations.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-565-0
Page Count: 376
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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