Fifteen stories by the author of 1991's psychological thriller Gone (written as Kit Craig and soon to be seen as a TV melodrama). Reed is strongest on character, though a number of these pieces end with satisfying story-turns—while others don't deliver as strongly as the reader hopes. The best are about the persistence of love, despite hopeless separation, love that arises when least expected, the persistence of faith, the recovery of sanity during a deadly snowfall, giving up a childhood reliance on an escapist fantasy to face reality, and the failure of the ravages of time to destroy a loving friendship. In three of the stories the female main character's father has either drowned in a submarine disaster or escaped from drowning, once to drown in a prison of alcoholism. The outstanding stories are the first and last, ``In the Squalus'' and ``Thief of Life.'' In the Squalus, based on a famous pre-WW II submarine disaster off New England, the narrator's father is among the survivors who—to save themselves—have to close a hatch on fellow submariners and let them drown. The dead remain with him forever while he closes a hatch on himself, sealing himself off from his family. This begins with a terrific grip, but ends less strongly. Full of superb detail, ``Thief of Life'' finds time making caricatures of beloved friends whose home lives are far more bitter than shows. Two stories are most amusing: ``Winter'' about two old spinsters who keep an AWOL teenage Marine as their guest during a blizzard; he eats them nearly out of house and home, and then they return the favor. ``Academic Novel'' is a vast university soap-opera done in 15 pages, turning the life of the mind into hormonal horseplay. ``Queen of the Beach'' appeals strongly, about a callously happy, super-slim Florida mom and her overweight daughter. Reed is a clean, clear stylist, everywhere expert and attractive.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-8262-0850-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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
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