A skillfully crafted and bracingly unsentimental look at one mother’s love—sometimes tender, sometimes frantic, always...
The author of Dying Young (1989) tells the story of a young mother with an autistic son.
Melanie Marsh, an American living in London, has a daughter named Emily, a sweet little girl with blonde curls who chatters exuberantly and loves to paint. She also has Daniel. Daniel isn’t normal. He cries a lot—wildly, and for no apparent reason. He hurts himself. He rejects affection from both his parents, and he refuses to play. And even though he is almost three, he doesn’t talk. When she and her husband, Stephen, learn that Daniel is autistic, her fear is compounded by guilt and confusion: “He’s always been like this . . . a diagnosis, a label such as autism, does not change the child. And yet . . . I cannot help feeling as though I started the journey this morning with my beloved little boy and am returning with a slightly alien, educable time bomb.” And, of course, the diagnosis does change everything. Melanie acquiesces to her husband’s insistence that four-year-old Emily start school. Stephen leaves for a business trip and doesn’t come home. And although she tries to be there for her daughter, Melanie’s desire to teach Daniel to talk quickly supersedes everything else in her life. Fed up with specialists from National Health Service and immune to Stephen’s suggestion that they institutionalize Daniel, Melanie turns to therapist Andy O’Connor for help. Andy not only coaxes words—sentences, even—from Daniel, but he also reminds Melanie to care for her own needs as well as those of her children. Melanie is a smart woman and an engaging protagonist. Her reaction to Daniel’s condition is both intellectual and emotional. She studies, she does research, she sobs until blood vessels break in her face. Her narration is frank and unapologetic, infused with a well-deserved crankiness that occasionally erupts in surprising flashes of humor.
A skillfully crafted and bracingly unsentimental look at one mother’s love—sometimes tender, sometimes frantic, always fierce—in the face of adversity.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51751-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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