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GOOD GIRLS DON'T WEAR TROUSERS

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

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TRUE BETRAYALS

Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.

Pub Date: June 13, 1995

ISBN: 0-399-14059-X

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

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HOME FRONT

Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...

 The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.

The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart. 

Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9

Page Count: 400

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

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