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WAITING FOR THE CYCLONE

Name: WAITING FOR THE CYCLONE
Author: Leesa Dean
ISBN: 978-1-927366-50-9

by Leesa Dean ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016

Stories of exciting escapades whose protagonists fall flat.

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In this debut collection, Canadian women and girls experience the world—from Quebec to New York City to Arizona to Guatemala and beyond—and get a little wiser for it.

There’s the protagonist of “Waiting for the Cyclone” who rides the famous Coney Island roller coaster with the lover she’s soon to leave. In “Malad,” a family with an addict mother moves south, into the home of an addict aunt. A woman wakes up with a man who is not her husband while on vacation and attempts to piece together the previous night in “Libertad,” so named for the tattoo on her one-night stand’s torso. In “Proverbs,” a student attempts to escape her cheating boyfriend and memories of rape by working on an organic farm far from both. The subjects of “Conflict Zone” navigate dark feelings when a flight to Turkey is cancelled on Christmas Eve. Returning to Mexico for the story “One Last Time,” a woman journeys to mourn for a woman she’s never met and finds a whirlwind romance with another. In “Monterrico,” exes travel to South America together when one is forced to prove she is not a “spoilsport.” When she takes an old friend to the dentist, in “Gone to Seed,” a woman is confronted with the life she could have had, had she not rejected a romantic proposition years earlier. These are sisters in transition. Dean attempts to give examples of audacious women who deviate from their expected responsibility of kindness and inherent goodness. While her intention is noble, the outcome is unrefined. Deserving neither of admiration nor sympathy, these women are unformed. The issue is not their likability (or unlikability as the case may be) but their indistinction: each is so similarly confused and thwarted that even when the stories differ, the protagonists blur together, giving the impression that this is just one story of one girl—the author, perhaps?—in variously unsatisfying scenes or stages of life.

Stories of exciting escapades whose protagonists fall flat.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-927366-50-9

Page Count: 214

Publisher: Brindle & Glass

Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).