A savage tale of parenthood and squandered hope from an author whose unsparing eye never ceases to subvert the mundane.
A man goes in search of his addict son only to end up lost in his own relentless crises.
Hunter (Ugly Girls, 2014, etc.) focuses on the grotesque and unlovable in this novel that spreads like a wildfire from West Virginia down to the verdant sludge that is Florida. Meet Greg Reinart—retired accountant, compulsive overeater, 58 going on dead (if he doesn’t change his diet). His second wife, Deb, is also a retired accountant, but whereas Greg is a slovenly presence in their home, Deb is immaculately manicured, motivated, and somewhat removed, yet in a pleasant way, like a host on an HGTV show, “nothing worrisome; nothing out of place.” His son, GJ, a grown man with a harrowing drug addiction, has been missing for three weeks. Because GJ has always “felt as elusive and slippery as his own beating heart,” Greg commits to “never, ever stop looking” for his son. And so, with trepidation, Greg embarks on a precipitous search and leaves his safe home in West Virginia to RV it to his spark plug of an ex-wife Marie’s Orlando condo. While Hunter's commanding narrative hurtles forward, it also pauses to coast as Greg ruminates on his complicated past, which we come to discover motivates his own morbid obsessions. The reproachful voice of his late mother pervades his consciousness, but often, her character feels archetypal, undermining Hunter’s lurid prose with trite remarks such as, “Now it’s time for you to be a man and support your family.” Tortured by his insatiable hunger—for food, alcohol, belonging, affirmation—Greg has been made to feel inconsequential by time and fatherhood. And it gradually becomes clear that GJ might be better off on his own, outside the vortex of his father’s misery. When Marie joins Greg on his futile hunt for redemption, their messy relationship, like an alligator wakened from its slumber, pulls the story toward darker waters.
A savage tale of parenthood and squandered hope from an author whose unsparing eye never ceases to subvert the mundane.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14615-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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