Taylor (The Lost Sister, 1989, etc.) tells the 1950's saga of a philandering Oklahoma father and the coming-of-age of his son—in nine interconnected stories that deal mostly with male sexuality and offer an incident-filled evocation of two archetypal lives. Bill Haynes is the father, Billy his son. Bill is a salesman (in his prime he sells high-school class rings, then, in his decline, textbooks) and, by his own account, an artist whose talent was ``compromised...before it could properly be developed.'' In ``The Girl I Left Behind Me'' and ``Dark Eyes,'' told from Bill's point of view, Taylor dramatizes a bleak life in dust-bowl Oklahoma: ``I have worked all my life. I have lost everything, a wife to another man, a job through no fault of my own, my son and daughters gone off to their own lives, and I've scratched my way back more than once.'' In the next six stories, told from son Billy's perspective, the family takes a vacation (``Sentimental Journey'') that is at first idyllic, then obsessive and argumentative; the parents separate; the father remarries twice and takes to hard drink (``Lady of Spain'') while Billy motor-scooters about town and, like his father, practices the accordion; ``The Tennessee Waltz'' not only introduces the clan (Texas, Tennessee) but also begins the sexual initiation of Billy that is consummated in the novella-length ``Golden Slippers,'' in which Billy, a shoe salesman (``the shoe is emblem and anthem of human folly''), meets Vernagene. In the final piece, ``Sweet Hour of Prayer,'' Billy attempts (in part through meditation) to come to terms with his father's collapse. The title story appeared in both the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories in 1987. Like that piece, the collection—managing by turns to be both gritty and lyrical—is a memorable one.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-945575-79-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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