A debut collection from a remarkably empathetic and versatile new talent. Many of the 11 stories collected here are set in a carefully delineated Silicon Valley where ``ordinary'' characters—a deliveryman, a harried young gardener, two plucky children of a real-estate salesman and his wife—find deliverance from fear and stasis. In ``Jump, Jack,'' the protagonist reluctantly agrees to take his frightened five-year-old grandson on a camping trip. Jack has only recently given up life as a vagrant and taken a job as a deliveryman, and now finds (to his mingled relief and dismay) while revisiting one of his old haunts with his grandson that the violence that once defined his life has departed. In ``Only the Lonely Heart,'' a generous, caring woman always unlucky in love opens her home to an ex-boyfriend's young son and his pregnant girlfriend, gaining a new baby to raise as well as some true understanding of her own needs. ``Chinese Tulip'' tracks 24 hours in the life of an overworked Palo Alto landscape gardener named Ruth, whose partner Louise is in the hospital giving birth to her first child (and having a hard time of it) and whose teenage helper LeFawn is in an emotional crisis. Nevertheless, after she rescues Mrs. Ulrich's hedges and Mr. Hinckly's tulip bed, Ruth resuscitates her own dreams of starting a mail-order tulip business. In ``You Can See Jupiter with the Naked Eye if You Know Where to Look,'' a 12-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister, while attempting to aid their hapless father, have an unexpected encounter with a motorcycle gang in the hills above their town. And, finally, in one of several stories dealing with eccentric fathers and their bewildered adult sons, ``Breathe at Every Other Stroke'' shows Stewart, whose alcoholic father long ago drowned in Lake Washington, at last learning to swim when he becomes a father himself. A rich, readable, wonderfully varied collection.
Pub Date: May 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-4385-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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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