An entertaining, cheeky and simple memoir of a rogue teenage girl.
An erotic adventurer and former arts and culture editor debuts with a brusque, unabashed sexual memoir.
Cook shows her magnetic, cocksure attitude from the very start of her memoir when she relays her plan, at 13 years old, to give her virginity to a willing 19-year-old boy. She gives readers a taste of her impudent approach to sexual experience, but as the book progresses, Cook seems to become more self-conscious and mindful of her readers’ potential impressions of her. Even so, she lays out her actions neatly, with little self-reflection and no apology. In one exceptional episodic chapter, “Word to your mother,” she tells of spurning a lover who refused to perform cunnilingus on her: “I was not going to be with someone who thought going down on a girl was dirty, especially after the countless hours I spent with his cock in my mouth.” She reveals that she had some insecurities when she walked away from his house for the last time, but she maintained her conviction never to see him again. Cook sometimes unnecessarily attempts to justify her digressive tendencies, and her parenthetical interjections such as, “(bear with me)” only serve as distractions and interruptions. Often, the voice here has the momentum-driven, jittery qualities of an adolescent girl, but it will likely charm many readers. One particular chapter stands out: “Mission Abort” details Cook’s experiences being pregnant for a short period and then getting an abortion; she reflects on her changing body and other issues in a balanced, mature manner absent from most other chapters. In the “Afterword,” the author expresses her hope that readers won’t consider her a “man-hater” for telling stories of ill-advised relationships with “some of the shitty guys…I’ve had the pleasure of encountering.” “There are lots of great guys I have dated,” she admits. “But those stories are so goddamned boring you’d never want to read them.”
An entertaining, cheeky and simple memoir of a rogue teenage girl.Pub Date: July 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1451582482
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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