Grodstein’s collection (The Best of Animals, 2002) showed she had yet to find her voice, something still the case with her...
One rainy night in Brooklyn, a youngish woman asks her live-in boyfriend to fetch a pregnancy test from the drugstore. Some banter ensues. Are we in for a comic novel with serious overtones, or a serious novel with a comic edge?
Actually, neither one, and that’s the problem. Boyfriend Miller dutifully trots off to the drugstore, but we don’t find out until the end whether Lisa is pregnant; in the interim, we meander through Miller’s life, as boy and man (someone should send the author to the plot store), in a tone that’s fitfully comic. Grodstein likes drawing up fun lists as much as Letterman, though hers are shorter. (Sample: in Miller’s life, “Some Close Calls So Far.”) Yet there’s nothing that funny about his parents’ divorce when Miller is 14. His father, Stan, is a pharmaceuticals salesman and takes long business trips that send his wife, Bay, into fits of weeping. They divorce, and Miller chooses to stay with his mother, who continues to mope while Miller wets his bed. All this is more pathetic than funny. The big event in Miller’s life comes when he meets Blair Carter. By now he’s in his mid-20s, living in Queens, working for a dot-com. Blair is cute as a button and lives with her father on Park Avenue; she also works for him but, curiously, none of her friends have met him. Miller falls for Blair big-time. Why she would fall for this chain-smoking slob is as mysterious as her father’s whereabouts, and she does eventually dump him (“you loved me too much”). Not to worry. Soon Lisa will pick him up on line in a Krispy Kreme and make room for him in her Brooklyn place, though Miller realizes (back to the beginning) that he doesn’t love her enough to bring up a baby with her.
Grodstein’s collection (The Best of Animals, 2002) showed she had yet to find her voice, something still the case with her first novel.Pub Date: July 6, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-33770-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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