Affecting stories about New Jersey oddballs trying to overcome difficult circumstances.
In an impressive debut collection, surprise outcomes and absurdist touches inform the misadventures of adults and adolescents living the blue-collar life on the New Jersey shore.
In interlinked stories that combine the poignant coming-of-age humor of Thomas Rogers' Jerry Engels novels and the weird wrinkles of George Saunders' stories, Kardos presents a gallery of lovable losers struggling with jobs, relationships and fading dreams in the fictional town of Breakneck Beach. The grown-ups include a school-bus driver sleeping with his wife's sister who ill-fatedly kidnaps kids on a long drive to nowhere, and a high-school music teacher just short of retirement who self-destructs when his superiors force him to lower the standards of his orchestra. The teens include a mysterious girl from a town of 204 where births and deaths are arranged so they don't have to change the number on road signs, and a boy who outrages his father, a corrections officer, by imitating the faded movie-theater organist who gives florid performances in their home in the guise of lessons. The less-successful stories involve the ashes of another music teacher and a female ghost seeking vengeance. Kardos is such an original, offbeat, revealing talent that he has no need to indulge in such gimmicks. Among his other achievements is to leave lasting impressions of such attractions as the Castle of Horrors, a pier side attraction where a teen's crush on his attractive boss is requited, Richie's Famous Organ Store, where a music teacher moonlights, and the Wawa food mart, where three kids get to know each other in the middle of the night during a power outage.
Affecting stories about New Jersey oddballs trying to overcome difficult circumstances.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-935708-10-0
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Press 53
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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