Gritty and believable, the characters in this fine debut collection may often have the odds stacked against them, but they refuse to give up on happiness. A number of the nine stories here are set in the small Georgia town of Tyler, and Gover expertly sketches the subtle distinctions of race and class that affect everyday interactions. In the excellent title piece, a black girl from the river (who passes for white) tries to make her white boyfriend see the town's hypocritical attitude toward the river girls, who are scorned by day but seduced by its sons at night: ``So, white boys like you come prowling down by the river on Friday nights, and you find girls with dark eyes...and you don't even remember their names the next day.'' Another Tyler story recounts the rise of a black singer and his realization that his voice attracts white girls. His efforts to explain this attraction to a black woman singer explore the nexus of race and gender; but, at the end of their tense exchange, they have still failed to understand each other. In this story, as in others, Gover is adept at portraying the intricacies of relations between men and women. The mistress in ``Mistress of Cats'' is a fiercely independent woman who works at a perfume counter in town and keeps her many married lovers on a schedule of assignations. A surprise encounter with her now-married high-school boyfriend and his family in the supermarket impels her to have a baby. After the birth, she accepts gifts from her lovers for the newborn but feels that the child is her creation alone. The heroine in ``Necessary Distance'' is afraid to let her boyfriend fully in to her heart. But she slowly learns to trust her gentle lover and to sense that ``if I jumped, maybe he'd follow.'' Gover's characters radiate humanity and integrity in every situation to which her spare, assured writing subjects them. An impressive first collection.
Pub Date: April 14, 1995
ISBN: 1-56512-049-3
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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