Landvik (Once in a Blue Moon Lodge, 2017, etc.) uses wisdom and her trademark humor to encourage readers to have a...
When Haze Evans, the Granite Greek Gazette’s columnist of 50-plus years, suffers a stroke, the paper’s editor, Susan McGrath, chooses to reprint one of her columns each day while hoping for her return to health.
Haze is a master at chronicling current events and interlacing them with memories from her life to form a poignant social commentary. She opens her heart to her readers and they grow to love her...although some are less tolerant of her open-book style, referred to as “puking on paper,” and others resent the political bent she reveals, earning her the name Radical Hag, which she cheerfully adopts while printing yummy recipes to offset her viewpoint. Her decades-old columns make a difference in the lives of a new generation of readers, especially Susan’s rebellious 15-year-old son, Sam. When Haze is in the hospital, Susan makes Sam, who’s at loose ends after his parents’ divorce, work at the Gazette, where he is charged with reading Haze’s old columns and choosing which ones to reprint. Finding nothing appealing in an old person’s writing, Sam fights the assignment but is inevitably drawn to Haze’s down-to-earth views. She piques his curiosity with the timelessness of her insights, and he shares her columns with his English class, which discusses them on Radical Hag Wednesday. Sam’s curiosity prompts him to snoop a bit in Haze’s office, leading him to a deep secret that she never shared with her readers and that brings new closeness to his relationship with his mother.
Landvik (Once in a Blue Moon Lodge, 2017, etc.) uses wisdom and her trademark humor to encourage readers to have a thoughtful response to the world and the people with whom they share it. A pleasure to read.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0599-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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