BABY’S BREATH

Name: BABY’S BREATH
Author: Lynne Hugo
ISBN: 0-912184-13-2

by Lynne Hugo & Anna Tuttle Villegas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2000

What should be a searing tragedy is instead another unconvincing take on mothers and daughters who love each other but are...

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A vividly detailed but unpersuasive second novel tries to show why a college freshman denies her pregnancy and then abandons her newborn baby.

The writers' territory is that perimeter around A-student Alyssa, 19, and her middle-aged mother Leah, a successful painter, bristling with defense mechanisms and hurt-seeking missiles that surrounds the hearts of so many mothers and daughters in fiction. Leah has long been divorced from Dennis, a self-absorbed artist whose remarriage to a much younger woman has left money as his only link to his daughter, who lives with Leah in Philadelphia. Alyssa is bright and does well in school, but when Leah, who is nursing her dying mother, can't fly out with her when she leaves for her freshman year at Berkeley, Alyssa is deeply hurt. Seeing this abandonment as yet another example of her mother's insensitivity, and already pudgy, she keeps eating, loses her virginity to a campus stud, and then finds herself pregnant. Because the plot demands that she behave in moronic ways and keep mum with Mom, who is sweet and nice and really tries, Alyssa tells nobody. Instead, she moves out of her dorm, lives alone and, when labor starts, heads to a subway restroom, where she gives birth to a baby girl. Disoriented by shock and pain, Alyssa is rescued by a street woman, who gives her temporary shelter in a flophouse in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. But when the baby's body is found in a trashcan, Alyssa is arrested and thrown into the slammer without bail. It's not until Alyssa's trial for murder that she finally begins to draw closer to her distraught mother.

What should be a searing tragedy is instead another unconvincing take on mothers and daughters who love each other but are too dumb and defensive to open up until it's almost too late.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-912184-13-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SWIMMING LESSONS
by Lynne Hugo & Anna Tuttle Villegas

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

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

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.