Australian newcomer Wilder offers a pocketful of stories that read by and large like apprentice pieces culled, say, mainly from writer-to-be student days. ``Beach Report'' is a word-sprightly satire in the manner of Barthelme, about a TV-jaded society whose members are happy to have their thinking taken over for them by visitors in flying saucers; ``The Vampire's Assistant at the 157 Steps'' (a maker of cheap movies overstays his welcome in a friend's cliff-house) follows in the sometimes revelatory real-is-surreal path; and what may be the best piece in the book (``The West Midland Underground'') creates a pensive collage of self and place and history as its narrator contemplates a legendary rail system. Nods in the direction of science fiction, though, end up as self-limiting exercises, as in ``The Man of Slow Feeling'' (a man finds that his sense-responses are delayed for three hours after any stimulus) and ``See You Later'' (another sees things only from a point 200 years too early in time). ``The Girl Behind the Bar is Reading Jack Kerouac'' is a slight story that eats its own tail, as the reader of a girl's stories gets drawn into a reenactment with her of the sexual events she's predicted-created in them. ``Joe's Absence'' overprepares its way to its jejune and unconvincing point that a young man is more interested in a sneak-peek at a writer-friend's stories than in a chance with the writer-friend's girl; ``Hector and Freddie'' chronicles the sexual confusions of two repressed Oxford students, trying for thematic height and sexual candor but hitting short of the first and generally trivializing the second; and the callow and undergraduate-toned ``Aspects of the Dying Process,'' about sex and unrequited love among the very young, takes itself seriously in a way its people and material simply can't sustain (`` `How do you get your jeans faded like that?' he asked her''). Deeply uneven, wanting more time to age. The title story, by the way, in case you're wondering, is an ironic little one-pager, deliberately flat as a pancake.
Pub Date: July 22, 1991
ISBN: 0-393-30785-9
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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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