bookshelf

DIFFERENT PEOPLE

Name: DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Author: Orland Outland
ISBN: 1-55583-763-8

by Orland Outland ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2002

Back to the drawing board.

bookshelf

Ineptly written tale about two gay men whose lives intersect over the years.

Coming-of-age in Reno, Eric Hamilton and Cal Hewitt sense a powerful attraction to each other. In a park one day, Eric summons the courage to kiss Cal passionately and Cal recoils. The move was foolhardy, Cal protests, since it nearly sparked a beating from onlooking gay-bashers. Other forces prevent Cal from opening up to a relationship with Eric—in particular, Cal’s Christian fundamentalist parents and their homophobia. The men take separate paths. Eric embraces gay life in San Francisco in the ’80s as he fights through ACT UP for the rights of AIDS victims. Eventually frustrated by that group’s infighting, he travels to New York, where he quickly finds professional and personal success. He wins writing assignments from major magazines and the love and partnership of another man. Meanwhile, Cal takes a destructive course. Still closeted, he is able to have sex only when he’s on drugs (“He had resigned himself to his Sisyphean doom”). Soon he’s hustling the streets of San Francisco for drug money, eventually suffering a mental breakdown. Returned to Reno to recover, Cal learns that Eric has also come back home for healing after the death of his mother (from cancer) and of his boyfriend (from AIDS). Predictably, the two begin to forge a relationship. The point that many forces buffet gay love (or any love, for that matter) and that the love still survives is a strong one, however familiar. But rather than dramatize the theme, Outland (the nonfiction Coming Out, 2000, etc.) stalls his story with a seemingly interminable series of banal and ponderous authorial observations (“Power is addictive in the simplest sense, in that once addicted, you can never get enough”), clichés (“his writing . . . took wing”), stilted dialogue, and cumbersome sentences.

Back to the drawing board.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002

ISBN: 1-55583-763-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Alyson

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.