Still, the author brings these characters to life even as Ray (as in ray of light) and Opal (opalescence) begin to seem...
A comprehensive love story stretches from the birth of X-rays to the detonation of the first nuclear weapons, and links it all with rural America between the wars.
Ray Foster carries X-ray equipment in his truck and has “Phenomenologist” painted on the side. His experience runs the gamut of the expressions of war and the insidious technology of it; he was gassed by Germans in WWI, and is fascinated by all things headed toward atomic reaction, from firecrackers on up. Back in the States he becomes known as a photographer, but before long meets Opal, who can talk to him about nihilism, and explain what a “glory hole” is: the hottest part of a glassblower’s furnace. The two have chemistry, quite literally: “I like it when you talk your science stuff,” Opal says. The newlyweds are soon off on the adventure of their marriage, first a return to Ray’s Knoxville, then to a farm Opal inherits. Their travels take them through a convenient tour of contemporary science: moonshiners, accidental electrocutions, Clarence Darrow arguing for Evolution, the Office of Rural Electrification, where Ray eventually comes to work. When a friend dies, a votive candle isn’t enough for these two: they toss a chunk of phosphorous into water to watch the light sink away. It’s an absence of chemistry that keeps Ray and Opal from starting a family of their own, but before long they happen upon a foundling they name Lightfoot. At her best, Wiggins (John Dollar, 1988; Eveless Eden, 1995, etc.) here belongs in the company of Eudora Welty. Still, the connection between modern science and Ray and Opal’s landscape can seem strained—“Like the Big Dipper, which has seven identifiable stars, the Tennessee pours through seven states”—and where would this story go if not to the tragedy of radiation poisoning for one of its principals?
Still, the author brings these characters to life even as Ray (as in ray of light) and Opal (opalescence) begin to seem overtly apocryphal.Pub Date: June 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-86969-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
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
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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