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MOTHERS AND SONS

Name: MOTHERS AND SONS
Author: Paul Hond
ISBN: 0-375-50805-8

by Paul Hond ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2005

A mistake that Hond really ought to have aborted.

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Soggy second novel after Hond’s witty debut (The Baker, 1998), this one about a rapidly aging twentysomething who writes unproduceable plays and can’t settle down to anything or with anyone.

Moss Messinger lives in a cheap Manhattan apartment where he's bothered and shat upon by pigeons in the airshaft, eludes commitment to his gorgeous, tenderhearted girlfriend Danielle (a nurse, oddly willing to nurture the insistently needy Moss), and maintains via continental divide a détente with his (also gorgeous) mother Nina, a jazz pianist living in Europe with her husband and fellow musician Anton. Worried that Moss needs her, Nina flies to America. Anton cheats on her, confesses, they break up, and Nina re-returns to NYC to live with Moss, who's recently sans Danielle, thanks to his somewhat surly reaction to her unexpected pregnancy. Enter Moss's “Super Yuppie” friend Boris (who has struck it rich running “an online fertility agency called LittleEinsteins.com”), who admires Nina's chops, and, Dear Reader, we have a second pregnancy on our hands. Unmanned by Nina’s unmotherly (though, come to think of it, quite literally maternal) behavior, Moss retreats with the understandably conflicted Boris to the latter’s posh summer place in Maine, only to return (after accidentally torching the place) for an LA meeting with movie execs interested in one of his scripts (an unlikely development, given the perhaps intentionally funny summaries of them Hond provides), then a final, risibly bittersweet Moment of Bonding with The New Arrival. It’s probably a credit to Hond’s sense of humor (if not shame) that, having concocted this blithely ridiculous plot, he doesn't know how to develop it. Only in the increasingly rare moments when Moss’s hangdog, everybody-hates-me humor threatens to turn him into a credible character does this novel—despite its thudding emphasis on conception and birth—come to life.

A mistake that Hond really ought to have aborted.

Pub Date: April 12, 2005

ISBN: 0-375-50805-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.