A rewarding read that captures stark, knotty reality and its living, breathing characters.
In Cohen’s novel, a father’s death impacts the family he left behind.
Readers first see Frank Kovacek through the eyes of his youngest daughter, Jenny. To her, Frank is a superhero, indestructible and perfect, though there are hints that their home life is far from domestic bliss. His oldest daughter, Margot, expands on that trouble in the second chapter, which shows both Frank’s deep love for his children and his capacity to dream his problems away. The story is told in chapters devoted to a specific character’s point of view—Margot, Jenny and Frank’s wife, Ruth, in first person, and his young son, Toby, in third person; another character, the assistant director of a funeral home, gets a single chapter in his third-person point of view. Initially, going from first to third person is jarring, but it turns out to be a smart choice on Cohen’s part, bringing an outsider’s objectivity to a central event in the story while planting the seed for an emotional twist later on. Frank’s loss affects every character’s choices and actions, placing each of them on a path from which they struggle to break free, with varying degrees of success. Jenny and Toby go through the harshest of traumas following their father’s death, though Margot sees her once-promising future sink almost immediately. At times, however, they fall into archetypes—Jenny being the one who internalizes everything and has her idealism dashed, Toby turning to dangerous carelessness and low-level criminal activity, etc. But Cohen rarely makes easy, obvious choices for his story, which is at turns heartbreaking and funny. He always has a touching or amusing surprise waiting, as when, on a date, Jenny finally takes a step past her fears. Adding to the difficulties is the 1960s cultural tumult in Southern California, which exists just outside the bubble of the family unit, leaving the characters that much more exposed when it bursts.
A rewarding read that captures stark, knotty reality and its living, breathing characters.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615942384
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Tattersall Press
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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