Carefully crafted but less-than-plausible debut by British author Clare.
Liddy Claver is 49—and unexpectedly six months pregnant.
The father? Barney, her lusty lover, young enough to be her son. But that’s not all the bad news. Liddy teaches jewelry-making, but the course has just been dropped by the local Adult Education Institute. She’s out of a job, and now best friend Mary says that Liddy’s husband Martin is having an affair. That’s no surprise, since she and Martin haven’t had sex in five years. Perhaps she should just run away to Cornwall and her lesbian great-aunts, Cleo and Cyn. They’d be understanding, unlike the rest of the family: moody, withdrawn Martin; gay son Alexander and his lover Mungo; homebody daughter Laura, married mother of twins and of a daughter with Down's syndrome; and her changeling child Miranda, a rail-thin writer with an eating disorder and a penchant for skewering others. All gather for Liddy’s 50th birthday party, but not before Martin confesses his infidelity. Everyone else has secret problems: Laura feels that husband Fergus isn’t interested in his less-than-perfect daughter. Miranda’s man, Richard, longs for children, but Miranda is obsessed with her flat tummy (Richard hasn’t noticed that she throws up most of her food). Alex and Mungo are happy, but Alex is toying with the idea of having a baby the gay way, by persuading a lesbian friend to incubate it. Liddy is too self-absorbed to pick up on any of this and does head for Cornwall and the great-aunts, telling them about her pregnancy. Then Richard finds out Miranda’s secret: she’s had two abortions. They fight. Alex and Mungo squabble. Liddy stays in Cornwall to help care for the ailing Cleo and gives birth to a daughter. Each of her grown children feels entitled to claim the baby, but Liddy isn’t about to give up Hope.
Carefully crafted but less-than-plausible debut by British author Clare.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-94637-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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