A promising first novel that offers a lighter-than-usual take on a deadly serious subject.
In this debut novel, a 40-year-old woman must reevaluate her personal beliefs, dreams, and aspirations when years of domestic verbal and psychological abuse escalate into physical violence.
Author Payne spent many years working as an advocate for battered and abused women. She’s woven that experience into this genre-bending novel about the choices and conflicts faced by the fictional Pinch O’Malley. Readers first meet Pinch the morning after her husband, Steven, has beaten her. Studying the bruises on her face, the full-time homemaker and mother decides that she must begin to reclaim her life—albeit secretly, in order to avoid her husband’s wrath. She answers an ad looking for part-time help as a freelance editor, and embarks on a personal journey that defines the remainder of the novel. In an intriguing twist, the author peoples this otherwise serious volume with a cast of quirky, sometimes-bizarre characters; the most extreme is septuagenarian Lydia Wright, an eccentric former photojournalist who hires Pinch to organize her journals for a memoir she’s writing. The crusty, crass Lydia—who may have once “accidentally” shot her husband in the foot to keep him from returning to battle in Vietnam—keeps challenging Pinch to find the strength to extricate herself from her increasingly unstable environment. Overall, this novel tells an essentially moving story. However, with the exception of Pinch, her daughter, Katie, and her brother, Kevin, the character portrayals are exaggerated to the point of farce. Some sections read like quirky revenge fantasy, such as when Lydia places catnip in Steven’s hat, and he’s set upon by felines. This narrative strategy occasionally works as welcome comic relief, but it also compromises believability. Readers are pulled back and forth between theatricality and chilling encounters with Steven, who himself becomes more bizarre as the story progresses. However, the plot’s resolution is ultimately satisfying.
A promising first novel that offers a lighter-than-usual take on a deadly serious subject.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1503112025
Page Count: 294
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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