Unerring eye for 1950s detail lifts this soap-operatic story above the ordinary, even if the plot springs are a bit too...
Teenager grows up fast in small Florida town—and then the plot really takes off in Hart’s second outing (after Waterwoman, 2002).
In expressive prose that avoids “southern fiction” preciousness, Hart brings us Dory Camber, daughter of Owen, hardware-store owner in sleepy Ordinary Springs. Dory’s earliest memories are fraught with questions. Where did her mother, Vera, disappear with that suitcase after telling toddler Dory a bedtime story? Why did her father bury her mother’s clothes? Why are her parents’ former best friends, the McMillans, now standoffish? Why is her father so distant? Dory works as her father’s housekeeper and helper at the store, and she assumes she’s first in his secretive heart—until the Yankee city-slicker Fitzgeralds move in across the street. Dory realizes with horror that her father, oblivious to the blandishments of every other female in town, is falling hard for the Capri-clad, spike-heeled, Dali-loving Myra Fitzgerald, whose WWII vet husband, Frank, is bedridden. While Owen and Myra are otherwise occupied in another room, Dory unwittingly becomes an accessory to Frank’s suicide. And then, when her father announces that he’s to marry Myra, Dory loses her already tenuous grip on self-restraint and, the night of her 16th birthday, has an assignation with childhood friend Pearce McMillan under a carnival truck, empties the cash register at Owen’s store, and tries to run away, only to be apprehended by the sheriff, who has zeroed in on her role in Frank’s death. From there, it’s on to reform school, escape (her expertise with hardware serves Dory well), a stint at a roadside diner and tourist trap, the birth of daughter Rose, an affair with a half-Seminole ’gator trapper, and a newfound determination to return to Ordinary Springs for a vigorous spring-cleaning of her father’s house and its resident demons.
Unerring eye for 1950s detail lifts this soap-operatic story above the ordinary, even if the plot springs are a bit too visible.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-425-20005-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2004
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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