bookshelf

POSTCARDS FROM THE GERUND STATE

Name: POSTCARDS FROM THE GERUND STATE
Author: Lorraine M. López
ISBN: 978-1-943491-18-6

by Lorraine M. López ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019

A witty, at times cutting collection.

bookshelf

The dreams and decisions, responsibilities and responses of five female academics at a questionable college in Georgia.

In a sequence of linked stories concluding with the titular novella, López (The Darling, 2015, etc.) draws an empathetic, often savagely comic portrait of the struggles of working women in what might be deemed an elite profession. However, as the women learn, there is minimal prestige attached to Birnbrau Women’s College, home of the Birnbrau Surprise (more like a baffling disappointment)—known fittingly as the BS. This is an institution that sets the academic bar ultra-low, delivers suspicious food in a dining hall known as The Gag, makes punitive budget cuts, and appoints less qualified men over more qualified women. López’s spotlight is on “five newbies” whose full, often arduous existences extend well beyond the professorial. Two have active love lives: Jane Ellen Klamath in “Careful Interventions” realizes her involvement with a man her friends have dubbed “Tall Drink” (of Water) might be heading in the right direction, and Hailey Linder, in “Truffles,” has a thing going with the supervising groundskeeper. But Lucinda Aragon is an abuse survivor, Dev Grisham in “Peach State Surety” learns her female lover is slipping away, and Kerry Fujimori, in “15 Beads More,” still has nightmares about her ex-husband. López fleshes out backstories filled with problem children, overstretched days, and finances, these struggles bolstered at least in part by the women’s mutual friendship. The novella, rather long and repetitive, encapsulates several of the collection’s themes, especially the inhibiting qualities of ingrained female behavior, as the group, on an artists’ retreat, struggles with an attention-hungry member. López writes entertainingly, with fine observation, but the focuses of her criticism can sometimes seem like easy targets.

A witty, at times cutting collection.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-943491-18-6

Page Count: 236

Publisher: BkMk/Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.