Not a breezy read and often downright challenging, but worth the effort.
Debut author Benjamin weaves a suspenseful mystery set in the Middle East into a deeper meditation on the powerful allure of home or, in this case, a land of one’s own.
Jeannie is a former Israeli soldier and now an investigator for the Shabbak (once known as the Shin Bet). Her father was instrumental in founding Oranit, a new village established in fiercely disputed territory that straddles the border of Israeli and Palestinian controlled lands. An Arab helps with the construction of a controversial wall meant to symbolize the autonomy of Oranit as a village and the political sovereignty of its inhabitants. The Arab, Mahmud, turns up dead, and it’s quickly and not unreasonably assumed he was murdered by the vengeful PLO, enraged over his cooperation with Israeli settlers. A bullet casing is found, however, and new evidence opens up the case, implicating Mitch, the popular and powerful chairman of the village council. When the murder appears to connect to another investigation into Mitch’s possible involvement in land fraud and smuggling from Beirut, the stakes soar. The details of the mystery unfurl slowly and often confusedly, sometimes leaving the reader lost within a patchwork narrative that relies heavily on flashbacks and remembrances. Thankfully, close attention is repaid by an astute view of the conflict over land in the Middle East from the perspectives of concrete, human longings. Oranit is saturated with symbolic power: “Oranit was to be their Garden of Eden. When Jeannie first arrived, there was nothing there but a barren patch overlooking a beautiful leafy forest.” Also, a shocking final twist will leave one’s jaw agape.
Not a breezy read and often downright challenging, but worth the effort.Pub Date: April 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1508804178
Page Count: 170
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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