A quiet yet powerful saga of imperfection and the struggle for family connection.
Following three generations of women, Polli’s debut traces an intricate web of family secrets as they are created, buried, and discovered.
It’s 1950, and Emily lives with her mentally unstable, alcoholic mother, Anna, and her Polish grandmother, Marishka. Emily’s father died when she was a baby, and she misses him desperately. After exploring Emily’s life, the novel flashes back in time to 1920, when newly arrived Polish immigrant Marishka was the young wife of a Polish coal miner in rural Pennsylvania. As she worries about her husband’s dangerous job and cares for her two daughters, Paulina and Anna, Marishka’s worst fears are realized when her husband is killed in the mines just before their third daughter, Eva, is born. The novel then returns to Emily before focusing on an older Paulina; the narrative alternates between them as Emily grows up wondering why her family is the way it is and Paulina realizes she has fallen in love with Anna’s husband just as baby Emily is born. Polli neatly dovetails the timelines, focusing on the parallel lives and pulling readers deeper into each woman’s life. Strand by strand, she reveals just a little more about each character, delicately intertwining the various threads of their existences in a way that subtly shows the complex emotional ties that exist between family members. The story grows honestly and organically, to borrow a phrase of Emily’s, and her emotional exploration feels cathartic without becoming cliché. When Marishka dies and Emily finally discovers the existence of her aunt Paulina—and the reasons why the family decided to disown Paulina and Emily’s own father—she reaches a turning point and decides to finally figure out who she wants to be and what her family means to her now that all the secrets have unfurled.
A quiet yet powerful saga of imperfection and the struggle for family connection.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991328161
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Serving House Books
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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