Good fun abounds when JCOW Enterprises sets up business and Harley’s life becomes "a rough approximation of things hoped...
In Swivel, Wisconsin, a cow named Tina Turner has birthed a calf with Jesus’ image on its flank, "the standard doe-eye Lutheran hippie iteration."
Drawing small-town characters out of central casting, Perry’s tale ripples with simple-life nostalgia. Tina Turner’s owner, Harley Jackson, says, "Well, that’s trouble" after seeing the calf’s "above average stencil of the Son of God." Forty-something Harley lives alone on the remnants of his parents’ farm. Most of the land was gobbled up by an interstate highway and the machinations of developer Klute Sorenson, who learns business strategy from audiobooks like Stomp Your Way to Success: A Clodhopper Walks All Over Wall Street. Harley’s best friend, supersized Billy Tripp, a trailer-living, clog-wearing cat fancier, wisely knows there’s money to be made when folks begin "assigning meaning to coincidence." At a staff meeting over bottles of Foamy Viking beer, Billy urges reluctant Harley to cash in and finance "undevelopment" of Klute’s tacky McMansions. Then the calf is seen by Harley’s mail carrier. Believing it miraculous, she calls the Rev. Gary at the Church of the Roaring Lamb. Soon, Sloan Knight of International Talent Management jets in, because there’s "a hard horizon on long-term marketability thematics." Another fly in the ointment is Carolyn Sawchuck, former professor and current environmentalist, who survives on EarthHug tea and Little Debbie Zebra Cakes while secreting used motor oil in Swivel’s abandoned water tower. Add a tow-truck–driving, junkyard-owning widow; a techno-gadget–entranced fire chief; a Barney Fife constable; and town newcomer Mindy, a sculptwelder who breaks Harley’s heart, and it’s sure to end with a bang.
Good fun abounds when JCOW Enterprises sets up business and Harley’s life becomes "a rough approximation of things hoped for."Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-228991-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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
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
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