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THEIR HOUSES

Name: THEIR HOUSES
Author: Meredith Sue Willis
ISBN: 978-1-946684-34-9

by Meredith Sue Willis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2018

The book’s heart seems like it’s in the right place, but the muddle of plot and character makes it hard to get behind.

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An ailing anti-government radical plots to reunite with two sisters he loved in childhood.

As girls in Cooper County, West Virginia, Dinah and Grace were left largely to raise themselves as their mentally ill mother was institutionalized and their alcoholic father took up with a wealthy widow. When the sisters come to the aid of Richie, the widow’s bullied son, he becomes infatuated with them, especially the elder sister, Dinah. Written in nonlinear chapters that alternate among Dinah's, Grace's, and Richie’s perspectives, the book recounts the trio’s adolescence, when Richie becomes an Ayn Rand devotee, a calculating entrepreneur (he sells drugs at school), and, most chillingly, a sexual opportunist, assaulting Dinah when she is unconscious one afternoon. Now, in middle age, Dinah is married to one of Richie’s old associates, Ray, and has moved away. Though Dinah and Ray are newly committed to Jesus and raising five children, Richie makes Ray one last offer of work to lure Dinah close. Grace, who still lives in West Virginia and is struggling with depression, anxiously anticipates Dinah’s homecoming. Willis (A Space Apart, 2017, etc.) has written a timely story, especially given that Appalachia was thrust into the spotlight after the 2016 presidential elections by books like Hillbilly Elegy. Willis’ Appalachia is a mixture of well-intentioned but ineffectual liberals, born-again Christians, and would-be domestic terrorists—all the ingredients for a potentially fast-paced drama. But even readers with a high tolerance for time and perspective shifts will struggle to put the narrative pieces together here. And the novel’s biggest ask may be that the reader have sympathy for—and buy into the possible redemption of—a fascistic narcissist like Richie.

The book’s heart seems like it’s in the right place, but the muddle of plot and character makes it hard to get behind.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-946684-34-9

Page Count: 252

Publisher: Vandalia Press/West Virginia Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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...

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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

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.