A lugubrious but moving account of a disturbed young woman’s troubled childhood and adolescence, by New Orleans second-novelist Friedmann (The Exact Image of Mother, 1991). Eleanor Rushing, like most orphans, suffers from a profound inner solitude that she has carried well into adulthood. “In case you don—t know it already, there is nothing worse than being a captive audience to dead silence.” Eleanor’s parents were killed in an airplane crash when she was ten, and she was brought up in New Orleans by Poppy (her grandfather) and Naomi (Poppy’s black housekeeper). Poppy is the silent type, as grim as cast iron and talkative as a post—which may be just as well, since when she learns of her parents” death Eleanor is struck dumb and doesn—t speak a word for the next four years. Her silence, though, may also be the result of a molestation by Naomi, who broke the news to Eleanor at her summer camp and then drove her home to Louisiana. Certainly it seems more than coincidental that Eleanor regains her speech at 14, the year she’s raped by a Tulane frat-boy. Given her catalogue of traumas, it isn—t surprising that Eleanor should eventually fall in love with Methodist preacher Maxim Walters. After following him to a convention in Nashville and starting an affair, she tries to convince him to leave his plain wife and start over with her. But Maxim worries about his reputation and even goes so far later as to request a restraining order to keep Eleanor away from him. The court that investigates Maxim’s complaint finds not only that she and Maxim were never lovers, but that Eleanor’s parents never died in any plane crash. Is Eleanor insane? Or merely deluded? The boundary between reality and fantasy can be elusive, especially when clouded by a succession of griefs. Depressing overall, but curiously affecting: Friedmann writes with a sensitivity that can touch the heart without falling prey to the sentimental. (First printing of 25,000; author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-58243-003-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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
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
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