A vast, ambitious and highly personal portrait of an often forgotten demographic, rendered with attention and sensitivity.
In Lund’s debut novel, the streets aren’t a safe place for anyone to live—especially not a kid.
Joe Rodgers is the goodhearted, hardworking executive director of Excelsior House, a home for troubled youth in San Francisco. His role as a hero to those in his care all but precludes the possibility of his romantically pursuing Lucy, a young woman he’s taken under his wing. Lucy is just one among a diverse cast of characters inhabiting Excelsior House’s cottages; others include Sarah Hillsbrook, a politician’s daughter who was sent there after a suicide attempt, brought about in part by her parents’ stormy marriage; and Sylvia Sanchez, a talented Salvadoran muralist concerned with issues of social justice, whose traumatic decision to have an abortion set her parents against her. Sprawling and conversational, the novel delves into the painful, puzzling lives of these and other young adults, each trying to make their way in the world. The lessons they learn are tough, and their competition with each other is even tougher; on top of that, gang activity (and murder), prostitution (and rape), and drug abuse beckon to them from every street corner. This dialogue-heavy novel takes a lively, original tack in its evocation of street life and, in particular, the massive material and emotional difficulties that street youth face. Overall, it’s less a clearly defined story than a textured sketch of environments, situations, dilemmas and tragedies. Nonetheless, the novel resolves several conflicts, including those between Lucy and her careless boyfriend, Keyshawn; and between Sylvia and her unforgiving, cruel parents. Much of the dialogue skillfully mirrors the inflections and jargon of street talk, lending a palpable realism to this fine-grained narrative and situating the novel in the long tradition of American dialect literature.
A vast, ambitious and highly personal portrait of an often forgotten demographic, rendered with attention and sensitivity.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615882000
Page Count: 386
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2014
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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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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