An enjoyable, humorous debut with great appeal to younger readers and those whose identity-formation has hinged on their...
One gay man's down-home coming-of-age story.
Debut novelist Perronne presents a believable and engaging cast of characters in this quiet tale of self-realization. Mason Hamilton, the lone son of a lower-class southern family, falls for his best friend, Billy, in a town whose biggest industry is a peanut-processing plant. Though little in the plot distinguishes it from other coming-out stories–teen misfit flees the conservative confines of home and town for the more liberal embrace of the big city, where he finds the courage to explore his identity–the tale’s dual setting in rural Mississippi and pre-Katrina New Orleans contributes to its unique charm. When Billy, who also turns out to be gay, hops on a New York City–bound bus the night of their high-school graduation, Mason is completely alienated from his surroundings–until a bottle-blond stranger rescues him from an interminable summer of ice-cream scooping at Spence’s 32 Flavors by introducing him to the local gay “club” situated in a barn. Teenaged Mason’s exposure to such like-minded company inspires him to pay a momentous visit to his sympathetic Aunt Savannah, who just so happens to own a New Orleans drag club. This contrast of worlds provides the answer to Mason’s silent wishes: “The majority of people were so terrified of sexuality that in my eighth-grade health class the chapter in our textbook containing the words penis and vagina had been ripped out. Here on Bourbon Street sexual images were thrown in your face, and they made it impossible for you to ignore them.” Perronne’s free-flowing passages and well-tempered sarcasm make the novel a pleasant one-sitting read, and the cliffhanger ending, as Mason chases after his first real love, will leave readers pining for more.
An enjoyable, humorous debut with great appeal to younger readers and those whose identity-formation has hinged on their sexuality.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2006
ISBN: 1-58348-463-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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