Miller (stories: Personal Velocity, 2001) has produced the “easy read of quality” that her protagonist’s husband Herb claims...
In her debut novel, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and wife of actor Daniel Day-Lewis considers a woman’s struggle to maintain a sense of self while married to a larger-than-life, ultra-successful man.
Fifty-year-old Pippa has spent the last 30 years nurturing her much older husband, esteemed independent publisher Herb Lee, and her beloved twins, law student Ben and news photographer Grace, whose independent spirit Pippa has fostered at an emotional cost to herself. When Herb sells their apartment on Gramercy Park to move to the Marigold Village retirement community in Connecticut, Pippa willingly sacrifices her comfort for his sake, as she always has. She thinks she is adapting to the imposed change of pace until she begins sleepwalking and behaving uncharacteristically while unconscious, even sleep-driving to the nearby convenience store for cigarettes she thought she quit smoking years ago. Cut to Pippa’s childhood before she became a stylish yet devoted wife and mother. The only daughter, after four boys, of a small town Episcopalian minister and a mother addicted to Dexedrine, Pippa was sexually precocious and rebellious. Caught as a teen in an affair with a local teacher, she ran away to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Trish, whose lesbian lover introduced Pippa to sado-masochism. For three years, Pippa drifted around the Village bohemian scene. She met Herb through his art-buying second wife Gigi. Herb and Pippa began an intense May-September romance and married after Gigi’s suicide. They have been living happily ever since until—cut back to the present—Pippa discovers 80-year-old Herb may not be too old to cheat on her.
Miller (stories: Personal Velocity, 2001) has produced the “easy read of quality” that her protagonist’s husband Herb claims is publishing gold.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-374-23742-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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
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
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