With its impressive sweep and density, Clark’s work triumphantly clears the second-novel hurdle. Don’t miss it.
Big, boisterous and hugely enjoyable, Clark’s second tracks the wild ride of a disgraced preacher across an American heartland pockmarked by scams and rackets.
Two lousy kisses. That’s all it took, plus some rigged DNA, to end Joel King’s marriage and ministry. Joel, a well-liked Baptist in Roanoke, Virginia, had unfortunately exchanged kisses, on church premises, with Christy Darden, the most gorgeous, pampered, sluttish, and conniving 17-year-old in all Virginia (Clark paints her with a wicked glee). The unworldly minister has pled guilty to misdemeanor charges and done six months of jail time, little realizing he was an entrapment victim. He emerges from jail penniless, only to be served with divorce papers and Christy’s civil suit for five million, while all he has is a ride to his sister’s place in Missoula, Montana. His driver is a businessman, Edmund Brooks, a loyal member of his congregation. En route, Edmund proposes that Joel join him and his partner, a black lawyer in Las Vegas, in a scheme to defraud insurance companies. The deal hinges on “borrowing” high-priced jewelry. Joel, a good and honest man, immediately declines. In Missoula, he joins Sophie, a struggling single parent, and her small son. There, he finds two low-end jobs, but sheer economic necessity drives him to accept Edmund’s offer. What follows is a heist that goes wrong, and eventually Joel is confronted by FBI agents. Meanwhile, before their depositions, he is desperately trying to work out a deal with the utterly untrustworthy Christy. All this is as hilarious and exciting as Clark’s debut (The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, 2000); but in this “grown man’s coming-of-age story,” the author takes that caper to another level. Joel’s spiritual struggle is unremitting in a world where the black and white hats don’t divide cleanly: Edmund is a likable rogue, while Joel’s probation officer, working his own racket, is total slime.
With its impressive sweep and density, Clark’s work triumphantly clears the second-novel hurdle. Don’t miss it.Pub Date: May 4, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4096-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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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