All six of the stories in Smith's third collection (Cakewalk, 1981; Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, 1990) have been previously published, so serious students of southern fiction will find much that's familiar here, though none the less enjoyable. Smith writes affectionately of the small social distinctions between working-class and middle-class southerners. Often at the center of her stories is a woman with odd notions or airs, of which she must be disabused, and her chatty narrators embrace a populace of lovable eccentrics. Smith's clearest aesthetic statement here surfaces in ``The Happy Memories Club,'' which concerns an old-age home resident's feisty refusal to render her past through rose- colored glasses—the way everyone else in her writing group does. ``The Bubba Stories'' also focuses on the creation of fiction. But in this case it's a reverse parable: A scholarship student at a fancy girl's college invents a more glamorous life for herself, yet doesn't discover her voice as a writer until she turns to what she knows best—her ordinary family. The prissy, spinsterish narrator of ``Blue Wedding'' returns to her small-town home to settle her father's estate and finds herself loosening up with some iced tea and vodka. The long novella, ``Live Bottomless,'' offers a young girl's perspective on her parents' troubled marriage. After her father leaves his skittish wife for a local artist, the narrator must live with her fundamentalist relatives. But her parents give it another chance on a month-long trip to Key West, where the filming of a Hollywood movie seems to bring just the right level of romance back into their marriage. The equally long ``News of the Spirit'' unites a long-estranged brother and sister—he a druggie and drop-out; she a bit odd herself and stalled in the unmarried state. Their wild reunion frees her from her long-held guilt concerning her troubled brother. As always, lively, salty, and inviting. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1997
ISBN: 0-399-14281-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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
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
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