Fourteen handsomely crafted stories showing sympathy for a broad range of mostly male characters—from stalwart small-town workingmen to a homosexual traveling salesman and an obedient Native American boy on the verge of marriage—by memoirist (The Broken Cord, 1989) and novelist Dorris (coauthor, The Crown of Columbus, 1991; etc.). The voices are as disparate as the characters, though most are echoes of midwestern hills and plains. In ``Earnest Money,'' a Dakotan draft-evader returns home to claim a small legacy from his dead father, but quickly and rashly marries a female drifter, turning the money over to her care. In ``Quiana,'' a henpecked rural snow-plow operator defies his wife and buys a loud shirt at a yard sale—then impulsively ignites an affair with the widow of its previous owner. ``Me and the Girls'' is a comic monologue by a man who's kidnapped two ``abused'' elephants from a zoo. In ``Shining Agate,'' a postgraduate anthropologist is surprised to find he's changed the lives of the mysterious Alaskan natives he's reluctantly gone to study. In the most memorable pieces, the emotional issues are strong and clear: In the opening story, ``The Benchmark,'' an aging architect of ponds remembers the drowning of his beautiful young son, an only child. In ``Groom Service,'' a Native American boy finds himself smitten by his future bride—in spite of the mothers' cynical, funny, but unending manipulations on their behalf. And in the finest story, ``Jeopardy,'' a shrewd and banal pharmaceuticals salesman who woos doctors' receptionists to obtain sales appointments by day and at night picks up fellow salesmen for sex finds through a routine phone call that the only person he loves, his pottering old father, has suddenly died. Crisp, convincing, and often affecting stories of men's lives. (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1993
ISBN: 0-8050-2296-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
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
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
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