These New Yorkerstyle short stories are filled with middle- class characters, most of whom—in defiance of travel-literature conventions—steadfastly refuse to experience an epiphany. Despite some fine writing, this uniformity kills Dark's (The Literary Lover, not reviewed) project. In William Maxwell's ``The Gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel,'' a couple returns with their daughter and niece to a spot visited 18 years earlier and find, to the husband's dismay, that the place has changed. The couple in Ward Just's ``I'm Worried About You''- -Marshall and Jan—travels through Europe and ends up in Paris, where a male friend lives and where Marshall feels a momentary longing for another kind of life. In the stories dealing with men making it with foreign women, the latter are uniformly empty and uninvolved. In James Salter's ``American Express,'' two American guys, ``lawyers and sons of lawyers,'' visit several Italian cities. One picks up an Italian woman and buys her a fur coat. Allen Barnett's ``Succor'' does a better job with international relations: An HIV-positive man who cares for AIDS patients in his home returns to Rome, where he lived at 19, and dines with his then-lover, who is engaged to be married. Sue Miller's ``Travel'' follows two of the better delineated characters here, former lovers Oley and Rob, who travel to Peru together and discover that things still do not work between them. Lorrie Moore's ``Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People'' also stands out, because it is one of the few stories with characters who are openly tourists. When Abby can't decide whether or not to stay with her husband, she and her mother travel to Ireland, where they queue up to kiss the Blarney Stone, which phobic Abby finds ``very unhygienic for a public attraction.'' These are exceptions, however, to travelers who are so civilized that they are affected by nothing. So why not just stay home? All the excitement of a trans-Atlantic flight.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-84578-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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