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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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.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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...

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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.).