Second-novelist Binstock follows the elegant Trees of Heaven (1995) with a disheveled exploration of weighty matters: familial attachment and loss, and the complex architecture of a writer's inner world. Phillip, a talented but lonely 46-year-old novelist, has agreed to allow his 23-year-old cousin Jennie—on the rebound from an abusive relationship—to come stay in his quiet New Hampshire home. The kind of writer who stores his manuscript-in-progress in a safe deposit box, Phillip has analyzed the fragile magic that results in finished pages, and he's sent past lovers away out of deference to his work. So he watches himself in dismay as he takes increasing pleasure in his attractive cousin's company and her admiration. As the sexual tension builds, other characters' stories intervene: There's Jane, a local apple-grower who loved Phillip and still mourns the end of their relationship. There's the ghost of Bertha, the previous owner of Phillip's house, who hovers about, spying. And there's Sutherland, a character in Phillip's novel, a soldier of pained sensibilities, suffering as his tattered company fights the Civil War. After much mutual circling, Jennie proposes sex and the cousins find bliss in each other's beds. But troubles loom: Phillip's moodiness emerges, Jane contacts Jennie, and Jennie's violent ex arrives still in the throes of obsession. While these matters develop, there's much to admire here: Binstock's prose is spare and graceful, and he skillfully weaves multiple perspectives into something resembling a cohesive whole. Phillip is complex and always interesting as he self-consciously attempts to keep hold of a vocation that defies conscious control and a present shaped by past losses. Jennie, however, is a flat and platitude- spouting character; the result is that the central love story lacks ballast. Still, between Binstock's stylistic virtuosity and the ample psychological insights lodged in Phillip's story—and in those of many of the marginal characters—there are substantial rewards in this ambitious if flawed novel.
Pub Date: May 16, 1996
ISBN: 1-56947-059-6
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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