Rigorous and accomplished, but it could use some of the warmth that pervades Cohen’s nonfiction.
A second outing by astute cultural critic Cohen (The Stuff of Dreams, 2001, etc.) discovers a lot of angst in Brooklyn.
From the bleachers of the Prospect School in Brooklyn, high-school junior Ann James kind of falls and kind of jumps, fracturing both heels in late December. Now she needs tutoring in her Brooklyn Heights home from Prospect math teacher Esker (she prefers to go by her last name), a withdrawn immigrant from upstate New York. Ann’s father, Wally, runs the trendy West Village restaurant Game, established with the inheritance of his gone-though-not-ex-wife Alice, who left three years earlier to become an indie movie star. Ann thinks Wally and Esker would be a good match, and one agreeable dinner suggests that that might be so, until Alice interrupts it. But this isn’t a story about romantic rivalry; the author is most interested in Esker’s wounds from a college love affair and a bleak childhood. True, Wally’s perhaps unduly agreeable personality and Ann’s adolescent confusions also get a fair amount of attention, paid in prose sometimes a little too exquisite, like the Christmas presents the James family exchanges: “ . . . very subtle and witty and charming presents, all boasting a certain kind of intimate and hard-won knowledge of one another, all a bit self-congratulatory in their celebration of life” (this is supposedly 16-year-old Ann’s insight). Ann rehearses a nouveau-beatnik dance with best friend Hannah and heartthrob Malcolm while Wally pursues Esker, who’s wrestling the ghost of the lover who left her to marry within his faith. Nothing much happens between the adults, but the school’s headmistress threatens Esker’s job anyway. The downbeat finale chimes with what we’ve seen throughout of Esker’s emotional scars, but it’s hard to feel more than detached empathy for someone so quick to cut herself off from human contact. Ann and Wally are left adrift in the middle of their stories.
Rigorous and accomplished, but it could use some of the warmth that pervades Cohen’s nonfiction.Pub Date: May 12, 2003
ISBN: 0-670-03167-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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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