Redolent of atmosphere and narrated in an old-fashioned leisurely voice rarely heard nowadays: a story of the first...
An eerie, atmospheric account of a drifter who wanders into a remote French village, disappears, and comes to haunt the lives of the local inhabitants, in a sequel to The Murdered House (2000, not reviewed) from celebrated Provençal novelist Magnan.
The hilltown of Lurs is the kind of place where strangers are noticed—especially strangers as odd as Séraphin Monge, who stumbled into the village café one cold night in 1921. Silent, shy, and mysterious, Séraphin says little about himself but admits he’s an orphan who’s left home and has no clear destination ahead. Eager to make a little money, Séraphin agrees to fell some trees for a local farmer, but after only a few days he’s buried in a mudslide and given up for dead. His story might have ended there but for the fact that three townswomen had already fallen in love with him: Auphanie Brunel (who runs the café), Marie Dormeur (the baker’s daughter), and Rose Sepulcre (who owns a small factory nearby) are all determined that Séraphin’s body be recovered and given a Christian burial. They prevail upon Antoine (the factory foreman) to undertake the dangerous task of dredging the quagmire. Once Séraphin has been decently entombed, however, he finds little rest—for an odd series of miracles begin to take place at his grave. Marie’s blind son recovers his sight, the butcher’s disfigured boy is cured, and the village atheist converts and enters a monastery. The parish priest is dubious, and his bishop (fearing hysteria or fraud) is frankly hostile to the cult that has sprung up—so they secretly take action to nip the devotion in the bud. But there are also stories circulating of people who’ve seen Séraphin walking about long after he was supposed to have been buried in the mud. Is he a ghost? Or is he, in fact, still alive? Maybe this is one of those weird incidents that eventually turns into a legend—or maybe it’s something else altogether.
Redolent of atmosphere and narrated in an old-fashioned leisurely voice rarely heard nowadays: a story of the first rank—intriguing, exotic, and extremely strange.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-86046-739-3
Page Count: 394
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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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