THE TESTING OF LUTHER ALBRIGHT

Name: THE TESTING OF LUTHER ALBRIGHT
Author: MacKenzie Bezos
ISBN: 0-06-075141-X

by MacKenzie Bezos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2005

There are no melodramatic excesses here, just the painful realization that a love that evades past injuries and present...

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A low-key but affecting portrait of a family whose admirable head has one fatal flaw.

Luther Albright is a responsible man. That shows in his work as a highly respected civil engineer in Sacramento; it shows in the shipshape house he built from scratch in the Sacramento suburbs; and it shows in his love for his close-knit family. Yet his story begins: “The year I lost my wife and son . . .” Lost: the ominous, ambiguous word hangs over the seemingly inconsequential episodes to come. The immediate cause of the unraveling is 15-year-old Elliot’s need to test limits. At school, he’s been given a research assignment on an ancestor, and he picks Luther’s father, whom he never knew. This causes acute anxiety for Luther, who has never properly confronted his feelings about his father’s crude provocations of his sweetly long-suffering mother. The missteps of one generation are about to be repeated. Elliot asks searching questions about his grandfather; Luther stonewalls; Elliot ups the ante. He shaves his head (a radical move in 1983) and displays a girl’s panties in his bathroom. Luther conceals his alarm, reacting positively or not at all, inviting further trouble, while failing to share his anxieties with his wife, Liz, thus alienating her as well. “His love meant too much to both of us,” says Luther. Bezos’s finely calibrated first novel seethes with ironies, the cruelest being that the sensitive, upright Luther destroys his family as effectively as his blundering father had done before him. “My crimes of emotion,” Luther calls them. What he means is his failure to achieve a depth of intimacy with his needy son or insecure wife. One blast of honest rage at his son’s later antics might have set everything right in a way that his flat “I forgive you” can’t.

There are no melodramatic excesses here, just the painful realization that a love that evades past injuries and present affronts isn’t quite enough. A self-assured, distinguished debut.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2005

ISBN: 0-06-075141-X

Page Count: 256

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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

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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.