Appealing in its evocations of a Midwest from two or three decades ago, but at its foundation it remains more like a YA than...
Cochrane’s second (after Flesh Wounds, 1997), a tale of growing up trash-poor in the Midwest, is often rich in detail, but in its psychology it remains content with too little.
Harlan Hawkins is a junior high school kid in West St. Paul, Minnesota, who loves baseball, roots for the Twins, collects baseball cards, knows everything there is to know about both the game and its many players—and even plays himself, under the guidance of his kind and orderly history teacher and coach, Mr. Walker. But there’s plenty on the downside of Harlan’s life. A few years back, his mother developed multiple sclerosis and is now, though keeping her spiky attitudes and temperament, becoming badly degenerated from it. And now, unforgivably, his hard-drinking, short-fused, and hyperviolent father (a lawyer) walks out on the family (Harlan’s brother, Gerard, is slightly older) and almost immediately stops sending support money to them. The situation is dire and gets only worse as genuine poverty closes its fingers around the necks of the family. Cochrane gets all these details absolutely right, but, at the same time, his people don’t go deep or ring new. Harlan’s father is so vile as to be almost a cardboard villain. His mother is feisty, cynical, and quick—the heart of the story, really—but other elements simply remain more standard. Will teenaged brother Gerard continue his downward path to dissolution (tobacco, petty theft, etc.) and ruin? Will Harlan, a bright student who’s been taken under the wing of kind, good, concerned Mr. Walker, really apply to the ritzy private academy Mr. Walker himself (not quite believably) graduated from? And if Harlan does apply, will he get in? And if he gets in, will he attend?
Appealing in its evocations of a Midwest from two or three decades ago, but at its foundation it remains more like a YA than anything else.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26994-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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