Leimbach follows her very successful debut (Dying Young, 1989, which had another life as a 1991 movie) with this lackluster story of frayed family ties. The Haskells, a Massachusetts family, split up when the father dies. Mother and daughter move to Los Angeles while 25-year-old Sam, our narrator, pursues his career in Boston (he manages musical acts) and rejoices that manic-depressive Lois and silly adolescent Ginny are off his hands. Four years later, when the story proper begins, Sam goes out to L.A. for the first time; selfish as ever, he's going for business reasons first, a family reunion second. That reunion is tricky; he must start over with Ginny, who has gone from girl to woman (a moody, tense, fiercely independent woman), and tread carefully around Lois, quite at sea without a caring spouse to supervise her pill-taking. Then, impatiently, Leimbach gives up on this family scene (banishing Lois to Oregon with her lover Van, a corpulent ex-lunatic loathed by Ginny) and wings it from page to page with the help of three new characters: Eli, the owner of a trendy Hollywood restaurant and upscale strip-joint; Eli's sleazy business partner Mikey; and Mikey's beautiful wife, Lucy. Sam learns slowly that Ginny (ostensibly just a waitress in the restaurant) is both Eli's woman and the designer of the strippers' costumes. Scarcely has this sunk in when Eli is electrocuted in his hot tub: accident? murder? Sam goes around and around this question (he never finds out for sure), while making love to Lucy, fending off the madly jealous Mikey, and (in his few calm moments) learning he can no longer play big brother to Ginny. The weak narrative grip, the awkward shifts and dislocations, the bland narrator, and the capricious removal of the most interesting character, the richly ambiguous Eli: all make this a disappointing second offering.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-42255-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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