bookshelf

WARMING UP

Name: WARMING UP
Author: Mary Hutchings Reed
ISBN: 978-1-938314-0-6

by Mary Hutchings Reed ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2013

A well-written, endearing book that surprises—even if its happy ending is a little too perfect.

bookshelf

A story about discovering the artist within and being happy—talent or no talent.

Reed’s (Courting Kathleen Hannigan, 2007, etc.) charming new novel stars a neurotic singer with mother issues who has been avoiding auditions and attending frustrating therapy sessions instead. When Cecilia meets a homeless boy on the streets, however, her life takes a risky new direction. By involving herself in his problems, she learns to cope with her own, and she finds fulfillment in helping two troubled teens who must care for a baby while living hand to mouth. The author employs a generic plot that feels very “rags to riches” and makes it her own, using everyday issues—problems with low self-esteem, money, kids—to connect each character to the others. Reed turns ordinary metaphors into apt reflections of the characters’ inner states. Cecilia, for example, who has been stalled in her ambitions, takes up running, which depicts not only how she’s moving toward a better self, but also how she feels about her life despite her progress. To the overly self-critical Cecilia, who’s new to jogging and not especially fast, she’s always being passed, or surpassed, by others. Reed’s portrayal of human psychology is convincing. We can, for example, sense Cecilia’s anger and self-destruction every time she lights a cigarette, particularly since smoking damages her gifted singing voice. Reed sometimes resorts to telling instead of showing (“What she had yet to realize was how much she needed him”), but overall, she gives Cecilia nuanced, flawed dimension. Early on, Cecilia is often judgmental and impersonal, fearing that the boy she’s helping is immoral and even diseased. What Reed does best, though, is bring out similar aspects in all the characters. The therapist, also an aspiring sculptor, finds that like Cecilia, he’s afraid to act and move forward with his life. The homeless boy puts his talents to good use, and each character achieves new meaning in his life—through romance, new responsibilities and opportunities. Those shared traits create sympathetic, memorable characters.

A well-written, endearing book that surprises—even if its happy ending is a little too perfect.

Pub Date: April 15, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-938314-0-6

Page Count: 287

Publisher: She Writes Press

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.