An ineffectual tearjerker—and a disappointment after Schwartz’s promising debut (Jumping the Green, 1999).
Feelings run riot as five parents reproach themselves for being bad mommies and daddies.
Front and center is Ethan Denton, a young man in the small, unfashionable mountain town of Angels Crest, California. Ethan is euphoric: He has just gained full custody of his three-year-old son Nate after a bitter divorce from Cindy, his former high-school sweetheart and now a raging alcoholic. The story starts with Ethan driving Nate up the mountain to experience the majesty of Nature. Curiously, the normally dependable Ethan leaves Nate alone in his unlocked car and returns to find him missing. Nate will turn up dead in the snow and Ethan will spend the rest of the novel writhing in remorse. Cindy feels bad, too. Admittedly, this was not her screw-up, but hadn’t she swigged vodka while suckling her baby? Other townspeople with bad family histories are Rocksan and Jane, long-time lesbian partners. Rocksan, the masculine one, has been angry since age six, when her father split; and Jane abandoned her baby, George, putting sexual desire before motherhood. The guilt has gnawed at her for 20 years. Now George shows up with his very pregnant girlfriend Melody, and Jane, passing up opportunities to drive the two to the hospital, calmly delivers the baby and wipes away her guilt. Then there’s Rocksan’s sister Angie, who runs the diner and can’t forgive herself for rushing into a second marriage and alienating her daughter Rachel; she’s making amends by raising Rachel’s abandoned daughter Rosie. Finally, there’s Judge Jack, a kindly old gent up from the city to help search for Nate. Ah, contrivance! Ethan will eventually wind up on Jack’s docket, charged with criminal negligence, but Jack will treat him leniently, for he empathizes with Ethan; the judge has made his own mistakes in raising his son Marty, now an addict and a thief.
An ineffectual tearjerker—and a disappointment after Schwartz’s promising debut (Jumping the Green, 1999).Pub Date: June 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51185-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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