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GOOD GIRLS DON'T WEAR TROUSERS

Name: GOOD GIRLS DON'T WEAR TROUSERS
Author: Lara Cardella
ISBN: 1-55970-263-X

by Lara Cardella ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

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When she won a literary prize for this slim debut novel in 1989, the 19-year-old Cardella was shunned by her own Sicilian village, whose inhabitants claimed that the brutal, gossipy small- town culture she depicted was an inaccurate reflection of their own. As a prepubescent, narrator Anna dreams of wearing pants rather than the mandatory dress or skirt, and her hopes lead her through several different phases. In the first, she decides to be a nun, since she believes that nuns wear pants underneath their habits. When she discovers that this is untrue, she sets her sights on being a man and latches onto a male cousin in order to imitate him, only to find that she is permanently lacking the necessary equipment. Finally, after her mother's offhand remark that pants are ``for men, or sluts,'' she apprentices herself to Angelina, the daughter of an engineer and the loosest woman in her high school. Cardella's writing and Di Carcaci's translation are forthright and amiable, although the story sometimes slides toward a young-adult tone. But Anna's honesty pulls it into the adult realm. For example, she recognizes Angelina's disdain for her, as when she takes a bath at Angelina's house and fails to drain the tub afterwards, then notes that in her own impoverished household they are forced to reuse precious water. When an uncle spots Anna kissing a boy in public, her parents beat her into unconsciousness, then confine her to the house. Finally, they arrange for her to stay with her father's sister and her husband, Vincenzo, who had molested Anna when she was nine. There are glitches here and there: Cardella attempts to wrap things up too quickly and is hazy about when her novel indeed takes place. Perhaps an introduction would have given Amercian readers a better understanding of the closed Sicilian society. A remarkably open, if occasionally amateurish, representation of a place where ``women can be wives and mothers but they can never be people.''

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994

ISBN: 1-55970-263-X

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Arcade

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.