Much too brief encounter with some very likable characters.
Writer confronts middle-aged angst while studying happiness, in a third by Grunwald (New Year’s Eve, 1997, etc.).
Sally Farber leads an enviable Manhattan life of letters. The mother of two well-behaved preteen daughters, she’s contentedly married to childhood sweetheart Michael, an earnest, dedicated doctor. But she’s blocked on The History of Happiness, the fourth in her series of concept books. Her writing-avoidance research into various felicity formulas derived from advertising, philosophy, laughter therapy, pop-psyche, Smiley Faces and Bobby McFerrin (mercifully sans singing fish) provides the struts for the slight plot of this engaging story. Sally is not always impervious to undermining by her needy, overprivileged girlfriend, T.J., an editor whose own maxim for bliss is: “I just had to do something for myself.” When Sally’s childhood apartment overlooking Central Park West is vacated by the death of a tenant, her elderly mother enlists her to prepare it for sale. Soon, her daughters head off to camp for two months, and Sally weathers her first experience with empty-nest syndrome. At the wedding of T.J.’s sister, Sally exchanges erotic sparks with lusty-for-life painter Lucas Ross. She takes Lucas up on his innuendos, and Mom’s apartment becomes the ideal trysting spot. Lucas increases property values by covering the bedroom’s floor and wall with his signature didactic friezes. The lovers share superior sex (and chocolate) and somehow miss colliding with T.J., who also has a key. But T.J. does succeed in enlisting Marathon Ross, Lucas’s X-ray wife, as a decorating consultant for the apartment, which leads to the premature and disappointing end. Grunwald’s prose is smooth, the dialogue between Sally and Lucas is deliciously trenchant. By contrast, Sally’s conversations with Michael are flat and opaque, belying her professed depth of feeling for him. Although not always relevant to the action, the segments on happiness are satisfying in an Alain de Botton sort of way. Book clubs will welcome the talking points.
Much too brief encounter with some very likable characters.Pub Date: June 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6299-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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