baby quest is a worthy read, both well told and funny.
A year-in-the-life of a single, Manhattan career woman intent on making babies before her ovarian “gum-ball machine”
dispenses its last egg: a tale that makes for laughs and touching moments—if little insight. Thirty-five-year-old Ellen Franck lives the New York dream. The marketing genius behind a prestigious fashion designer, she rubs shoulders with the rich and famous, has a great apartment and a hectic social life—but no baby. Career dedication left Ellen little time to ponder procreation until rapture with her sister’s first child, the “Pickle,” sparked maternal yearning. Ellen’s 47-year-old lover, an intimacy-phobe since his son died and his wife left him, doesn’t share her enthusiasm, so Ellen spends a year scheming to find a partner—or at least a sperm donor—who will oblige her with an infant. This quintessential New York story (where yet another beautiful, talented women trawls a sea of potential fathers and comes up empty) nicely ponders the question of whether women, despite feminist strides, still need men to complete them. It glosses over other social questions that lie at its center, however: What makes it so hard for urbanite, professional women to find viable partners? Why have their male counterparts become scared of commitment to the point of clich‚? These questions aside, Zigman’s second (after Animal Husbandry, 1997) portrays a woman’s love for a child so poignantly, in scenes between Ellen and the Pickle, that more sentimental readers may weep. And the close, in which Ellen realizes she doesn’t need a man yet gets one anyway—not because he completes her but because they love each other—is both hopeful and heartwarming. Though Zigman’s refusal to probe some of the deeper questions sometimes frustrates, her modern story of a woman on a
baby quest is a worthy read, both well told and funny.Pub Date: April 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-33340-4
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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