Despite engaging moments, Simon’s didactic tone strains readers’ patience.
Outrage against a mental-health system no longer in service is the guiding force in this pointedly uplifting love story from novelist and memoirist Simon (Riding the Bus with My Sister, 2002, which became a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie) about a deaf African-American man and a mentally disabled woman who meet in a Dickensian mental institution in the 1960s and overcome all obstacles through force of will and spiritual goodness.
In 1968, childless retired schoolteacher Martha briefly gives shelter to Lynnie and Homan, runaways from the residential facility in northern Pennsylvania, until the corrupt head doctor and his henchmen track them down. Homan gets away. Lynnie is taken back in a straightjacket, but the authorities don’t know about her newborn baby, delivered by Homan but the product of a rape. Keeping her promise to Lynnie, Martha hides infant Julia with the help of various former students and eventually raises her as her own granddaughter. Over the next four decades, Homan never ceases to long for Lynnie and the baby. Deaf since a childhood fever, he uses his street smarts, spiritual wisdom and mechanical skills to survive a picaresque series of adventures until he lands in California, where he more than prospers. Meanwhile, Lynnie remains in what she calls “the bad place,” where she was placed as a child by a middle-class parent embarrassed at her lack of cognitive skills. Fortunately, saintly staff member Alice helps Lynnie develop her artistic talent and keeps track of Julia through one of Martha’s students. The publication of an exposé on “the bad place” changes conditions in the late '70s. Gradually Lynnie learns to talk. She reunites with her beloved older sister Hannah, who sells Lynnie’s art in the gallery she runs. Now living independently, Lynnie still longs for Homan and Julia. The question is not if but how they will unite (and why resourceful Homan takes so long).
Despite engaging moments, Simon’s didactic tone strains readers’ patience.Pub Date: May 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-446-57446-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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