From the author of Entertaining Angels (1995), a bittersweet if at times pretentious evocation of adolescence in South Africa in the '70s, a time of violent upheavals. Narrator Mart Vermaak, separated from her husband, is living in London with her young son in the 1990s, homesick but fearful of the violence that still threatens to destroy her native land. She begins her story with a recollection of her first day as a 16-year- old at the drab hostel attached to the local high school, when she met her roommate, the fearless and free-spirited Dalena. Mart's recollections alternate with letters written in the recent past (199293) to a nameless figure who will soon be 17, the same age the child's mother was when she was born. The letters, rounded out with newspaper quotes and political commentary, are with few exceptions sententious and self-conscious, and the identity of the child is soon apparent. The recollections, though, with their evocations of the Afrikaner noveau riche, and of the tedium and trauma of adolescence, give the story an appealing freshness. Mart's parents live, like Dalena's, on a farm; they are loyal Afrikaners who have never questioned apartheid, but their children are different. Simon, Mart's elder brother (with whom Dalena falls in love), participates in South Africa's incursion into Angola, then, disillusioned, joins the liberation struggle. His even more skeptical friend Pierre, Mart's first love, is killed fighting; Dalena, pregnant, leaves school and gives up her child for adoption; and Mart, as riots break out in Soweto, sadly realizes that she is coming of age in a world where the usual teenage crises have been superseded by more urgent, and far more grave, realities. An engaging account of adolescence, those fraught years when everything is deadly serious and nothing can be taken for granted- -especially in a place like South Africa.
Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-94148-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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