Achieves the neat trick of presenting moral values in a persuasive and uplifting way without being preachy or boring.
In this novel by a 9/11 survivor, chance plays a major role in the lives of two best friends—but character plays an even bigger one.
In 1989, promising college student Tobias Hillyer has just arrived home to spend Christmas with his condescending father, alcoholic mother and Simeon, his gifted and artistic younger brother. After a sudden and tragic accident, Tobias becomes his brother’s caretaker and, instead of returning to school, finds his academic future shredded. In contrast, Martin, his former college roommate and best friend, seems showered with good fortune, landing a high-paying job after college with Lehman Brothers in New York. The men keep in touch through a shared passion for tennis. Tobias, stuck in a low-paying job, marries Carmela, a psychiatric nurse he met as a result of the accident. Martin marries Valerie, and the years tick by. The couples, and eventually their children, stay close friends, despite the discrepancy in their incomes. On a whim, Tobias buys a Mega Millions lottery ticket and wins the jackpot—suddenly everything is reversed; Tobias and Carmela live out their fantasies while Martin faces bankruptcy. The allegedly lucky couple faces countless problems—kidnappers, acquaintances begging for money, jealousy and lack of trust. Still, Tobias has a guiding belief in what is truly important, making his story one of triumph rather than defeat. Aside from an occasional overabundance of “telling”—details from the wedding and honeymoon read like journal entries—the strong sense of story and pace makes this an eminently readable and inspiring narrative. Duval’s earnest, likable characters possess an inner strength they must put into play in moments of struggle. The author adds suspense by intimating how the characters may be impacted by the eventual terrorist attack on World Trade Center.
Achieves the neat trick of presenting moral values in a persuasive and uplifting way without being preachy or boring.Pub Date: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1604945201
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Wheatmark
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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