A moving first novel, about family life and its challenges and discontents, from an acclaimed short-story writer (The Summer Before the Summer of Love, 1995, etc.). It's the story of the Keller family of Madison, Wisconsin, throughout the 1960s and, briefly, afterward—especially during the watershed year 1963, when 12-year-old Suzanne Keller's high-strung mother Helen (that's right), helplessly mourning the death of her idol John F. Kennedy, retreats into the pattern of depression and eccentricity believed to date from her adolescence, when Helen's parents were killed in an automobile accident. The novel thereafter weaves forward and backward in time, as Suzanne (who narrates) recalls and evaluates her beautiful, unstable mother's effects on her patient husband Glen (a curious, conscientious optometrist), Suzanne'sclothes-and-boycrazy older sister Bonnie, and a vividly characterized clutch of neighbors and best friends, including a farmhouse full of disapproving paternal in-laws whose intolerant views of the free-spirited Helen emerge during a stingingly evoked Thanksgiving dinner. Swick's beautifully controlled plot shifts into high gear when Helen ``escapes'' with Suzanne in tow on an unannounced trip to her Nebraska hometown, and especially as the latter begins to piece together the long-buried facts of her mother's girlhood losses and later traumas. The car trip episode is perhaps a trifle too reminiscent of Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here, and Swick's generally successful use of '60s touchstone movies and music and culture references to denote specific years betray her into what seem like anachronisms (was the term ``wimp'' around much in 1963? was the phrase ``it really sucks'' really current in 1969?). These are the only blemishes on a novel that renders the stuttering momentum of family dynamics with equally warm emotion and relentless clarity. A heartening breakthrough into the longer form by a writer who's already a short-story master, and grows more accomplished with each book she produces. (Regional author tour)
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-017434-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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