This first novel by Durban (All Set About with Fever Trees, 1985) adds little to the ever-expanding literature of family dysfunction: it's really one long-winded southern whine about ``a make-believe world of appearances, a world of graciousness and beauty and truth.'' No Quentin Compson, Annie Vess simply hates the South. Or, at least, the South of her parents—the Episcopalian upper-middle class with its social connections and privileges. But she mostly just hates her parents, as she discovers after returning home in her early 30s. Herself a young widow, Annie heads back to South Carolina (from Pennsylvania), after her father dies, only to learn that this man of high principle led a life of low deceit. For years, Annie admired her father's doomed mission to prevent the flooding of some scenic lowlands. But while sorting out his papers, she finds that he invested wisely based on information concerning the new-formed lakefront. And it gets worse. The beneficiary of his shrewd dealings is his secretary who, Annie realizes, has long been his mistress. Although she now understands her mother's bitterness, she blames her for maintaining the proper social front throughout the years. Meanwhile, as naive as Annie claims to be, she harbors no little scorn for her cousin Melody, a southern beauty queen engaged to a handsome frat boy turned New South entrepreneur. Melody is, of course, conventional in all the ways Annie refused to be. Is it any wonder then that her perfect marriage quickly sours? Meanwhile, Annie finds true happiness in the arms of one Legree Slack—a calm, considerate regular guy of lower-class, Baptist roots. Holding all the cards in this, her narrative, Annie—a self- righteous, self-absorbed reverse snob—learns to forgive all those around her. Durban seems to have no idea how disagreeable her narrator is, nor any sense of irony about her morbid story. Not a tale of innocence betrayed, then, but of arrogance revealed.
Pub Date: June 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-684-19258-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
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
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
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