A curious and unaccountably redundant seventh novel from the English-French author of, most recently, the prize-winning Daughters of the House (1993). In a smooth style that expertly details several distinct historical settings, Roberts tells two juxtaposed stories: the life of St. Josephine, as recalled by her formerly wayward niece Isabel, and capsule “lives” of 11 other women elevated (in some cases, virtually air-lifted) to sainthood. Both narratives are framed by chapters set in “The Golden House,” a reliquary where the bones of the devout dead are displayed and worshiped. It’s the final resting place, in a sense, of the restless Josephine, a bookish girl and precocious writer who, after an uncharacteristic act of teenage rebelliousness, is sent to a convent where “she struggled for years to get the hang of how she was supposed to be holy.— Roberts depicts Josephine as a truculent intellectual unsettled by manifestations of the divine (Christ visits her in bed at night); a passionate gardener, autodidact (for whom learning leads to humility), and socialist organizer who eventually founds her own convent. It’s hard to gauge Roberts’s aims in this narrative, which can be read as an ironical study of the psychological dimensions of religious devotion. Things are clearer in the 11 interpolated “lives,” whose subjects include St. Petronilla, the daughter of St. Peter, who’s mortified by the drunken post-crucifixion carousing of the apostles; St. Thais, who seduces her father and dies in the well to which she is thereafter confined; and St. Marin, a girl disguised as a boy who is falsely punished for “fathering” her father’s illegitimate child—and achieves martyrdom. These are broad, often startlingly sexually explicit caricatures of emotionally driven females (many of whom have a thing for, or are had by, their fathers) whose intensity alone, it seems, sanctifies them. Insouciant and entertaining, even when one doesn’t know quite what to make of it. The Vatican will not be amused.
Pub Date: May 21, 1998
ISBN: 0-88001-597-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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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