First published in 1987 in France, Kaplan's drifting, pointillistic attempt to evoke four New Yorkers' existential angst may strike American readers as more comic than elucidating with its quasi-meaningful juxtaposition of ghetto blasters with abrupt, inexplicable sexual battles among white people. Translated by a French psychologist and novelist impressed with its ``subliminal violence and disturbing beauty,'' this paper-bound film noir is unlikely to inspire a fan club here. They met in Central Park one Sunday: Julien, a handsome rogue with a mysterious past; Anna, a sensible single woman with a job at a school; Mary, a boutique saleswoman and young mother; and Chico, a passionate Latin American waiter. What connects them from their first meeting is their fascination with Mary's young daughter, Nathalie—a generic character whose youth, rather than any innate personality, serves to unleash the adults' own deepest fears and hopes suppressed since childhood. The four adults pair off—Anna with Julien, Chico with Mary—and spend several fragmented, sporadically tortured New York seasons together, sharing parties and breakfasts and trying to ignore Julien's increasingly unhealthy love for Nathalie. ``Do you know the Brooklyn Bridge?'' Julien continuously demands of Nathalie and the others. ``On this bridge...you see the sea and the city and it gives you a fabulous impression. The world, the world is a cathedral.'' The statement is supposed to mean something—but Julien's friends fail to heed the message, caught up as they are with such obsessions as Mary's: ``You feel it, at that very moment,'' Mary says of her daughter, ``...she's completely calm, on her back, she's waiting, you can feel it, she's waiting for something from you, she's eagerly waiting and, at the same time she's giving to you, as well, without saying anything, she would like to give to you.'' French postmodernism and the Brooklyn Bridge? Something was lost in translation.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1993
ISBN: 0-88268-112-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
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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