A bittersweet meditation on human connections and the transformative power of friendship.
When a reserved and unassuming man meets a free-spirited young woman, a bond develops that changes both of their lives.
In this debut novel, Henry is an orderly man who rarely deviates from his strict schedule. He lives in a modest home in a quiet neighborhood in Silverton, Connecticut, and works for Haul of Fame Trucking. When he is not tending to his meticulously maintained yard, he visits his elderly mother, who has dementia. Twice a week he goes to Stan’s Deli, where he purchases soup and a dinner roll. One day, he arrives at the deli for his usual order and is surprised to see someone new behind the counter. Chiffon, Stan’s distant cousin, is an idealistic young woman searching for her place in the world. Their initial interactions are cautious but cordial; Henry values certainty, and Chiffon’s moods and style of dress are anything but predictable. Over the course of several months, a friendship gradually develops. Chiffon introduces Henry to new experiences, including riding a bicycle, and he offers his support as she struggles with depression. When Henry and Chiffon face personal crises, they discover how simple acts of kindness can evolve into a deep and meaningful friendship. Holmes’ novel is a gentle and affecting portrait of friendship and the life-changing effects of reaching out and embracing new experiences. Henry and Chiffon are complex and engaging protagonists whose unexpected connection changes them in ways neither could imagine. Their friendship develops slowly, built on small acts of consideration such as Chiffon’s giving Henry a ride home from the deli. Chiffon is unlike anyone Henry has ever met, and the author does a fine job capturing his awkwardness as he tries to relate to her. Chiffon is a compassionate woman who hopes to make a difference by volunteering in her community. Holmes is particularly adept at connecting her protagonists’ experiences with those of a well-developed group of supporting characters. A particularly strong subplot focuses on Henry’s colleague Sylvie, who is inspired by his independence and strives for that in her own life.
A bittersweet meditation on human connections and the transformative power of friendship.Pub Date: July 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4842-5
Page Count: 230
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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
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