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HUNGRY HEART

Name: HUNGRY HEART
Author: Marjorie Meyerle
ISBN: 978-1453678107

by Marjorie Meyerle ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2012

An often resonant novel about choice, regret and absolution.

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Upon moving from the East Coast to rural Colorado, a divorcé parses the complexities of love in Meyerle’s (Bread of Shame, 2010) ruminative novel.

“There are many things which only the heart can grasp,” Jeff Stillman acknowledges as he reaches his twilight years. Indeed, his heart has long been a source of mystification for him. His love for his wife, Kathryn—the mother of his five children—is far from simple or wholly devoted, and it shares space in his heart with his love for Julia, a compassionate beauty and the wife of his best friend, Dean. When Jeff’s marriage finally fails—due, in part, to his extreme focus on his Manhattan law career—he starts fresh in quiet, sparse Kiowa, Colo. The home he purchases there, sight unseen, had once belonged to Julia and Dean, who founded an educational ranch nearby for disabled children. Jeff had always admired their altruism, but he’d always “blithely pursued the good life,” responding defensively to the notion that he might also practice such generosity: “Did that mean he and others should be rebuked for not being like them? No, he thinks.” His experiences in Kiowa, where he must rely on his neighbors to survive, force a profound change of outlook. The book’s central love triangle, and its idealization of rural living as a means to enlightenment, may appear prosaic, and some of Jeff’s observations (such as “It is time to be true to himself”) and predilections (including his tendency to get teary-eyed) verge on the trite. But the novel, despite its skirting of clichés, is also deeply insightful about love, human interaction, solitude, and even the ways in which America’s current economic and political landscapes affect people’s interdependency. Much of its success comes from the characters’ unpredictability and its intricate structure; the chapters alternate between modern-day Kiowa and slide backward from 2008 to 1969, depicting in reverse the gradual cracks in a marriage and a life’s mistakes.

An often resonant novel about choice, regret and absolution.

Pub Date: May 21, 2012

ISBN: 978-1453678107

Page Count: 316

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

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.