Morris’s latest is as anemic as her previous (Acts of God, 2000).
Obsessed by the accident that killed her father, a woman confides her misgivings to a famous novelist in this, Morris’s eighth work of fiction.
Andrea Geller is a painter and junior faculty member at Hartwood, a liberal arts college in upstate New York. Drifting uncertainly between two lovers (Charlie, single but unexciting, and Gil, married but passionate), Andrea doesn’t consider either relationship as important as discovering the truth about her father’s death. Simon Geller was a distinguished pediatric cardiologist on his second marriage. One foggy night he left the house on an errand, lost control of his car, and suffered a heart attack, but took two years to die. Andrea wants to know why her stepmother Elena, who supervised his medication, had let him drive off alone. And where was he going? Elena had inherited everything, and, though Andrea and brother Robby contested the will, the judge had ruled against them. For Andrea her father’s death is still an open wound. Enter Loretta Partlow, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and Andrea’s neighbor. The two become friendly. Andrea is hoping the novelist will use her version of events (deliberate overmedication to cause a death) in a story that will scare the daylights out of her stepmother, a big Partlow fan. Whoa! Didn’t Andrea know never to trust a writer, especially a “gorgon” like Loretta with her “ferret eyes”? Couldn’t she have listened to her own “small voice” telling her to desist? Regardless, Andrea confides in her neighbor, though initially concealing her own difficulties with her father. But Loretta will root those out and use them to devastating effect in the novel (which gets a rave from Kirkus). But before we reach that all too predictable climax, there’s much genteel chitchat between the spider and the fly, all quite boring. Evidently, Partlow is one of those writers who saves her dazzle for the printed word.
Morris’s latest is as anemic as her previous (Acts of God, 2000).Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32792-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
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
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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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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