A moving novel of family, history and dreams deferred that captures the joys and pains of both sisterhood and romantic love.
A deftly conjured historical novel dealing with the darker side of love and familial legacy.
“It’s a wonder how some relatives can bring out the worst in you,” a minor character muses in Shainin’s cutting debut novel, which examines the fraught matrices of rivalry, desire and resentment within two generations of a German immigrant family in Queens, New York, in the mid-20th century. Two sisters—willful, sensuous Lottie and younger, anxious Sabine—serve as the story’s emotional and narrative focus; Shainin introduces their contrasting personalities in childhood, then follows them to America and throughout their adult lives. Although the book progresses chronologically for the most part (the first and last chapters, narrated by Sabine’s younger daughter, are the exceptions), the plot is not strictly linear, as it focuses on quotidian moments of interpersonal significance rather than a series of remarkable events. From chapter to chapter, it’s often difficult to tell how much time has passed or just what’s transpired in the interim, but this is one of the pleasures of this impeccably constructed book: The arguments are repeated, but the characters remain stagnant. Though Lottie and Sabine choose radically different mates, both men drink too much; each in her own way, the sisters find themselves resigned to the limitations of married, working-class life. The world of mid-century New York City, in particular, comes to life through Shainin’s fine sense of detail: “Today the East River was the color of her mother’s unpolished pewter plates. Only when a tugboat’s passage broke the dull skin did Lottie feel the water had any dimension at all.” Although the book loses a bit of its precision toward the end as it surveys the last decades, its haunting, complex final passage is recompense enough. Overall, this debut is resplendently heartbreaking.
A moving novel of family, history and dreams deferred that captures the joys and pains of both sisterhood and romantic love.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4507-1750-2
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Above Your Station Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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