Olmstead's first novel is a drawn out melodrama of love and underworld murder in rural New England. By the author of the story collection River Dogs (1987). Asel and Averell are the orphaned brothers of backwoods (Maine) parents who fished and trapped for a livelihood. After their accidental death, young Asel is raised by a brutal German farmer named Borst; later (still unable to read or write), he works for older brother Averell deep in the Maine woods, as a scout and guide for big-city "sports" who come, in their decadent manner, to drink and shoot. All goes well until Averell mysteriously disappears, and Asel lives on in their hunting cabin for three years, trapping furs for a decent-minded middleman and wrestling with a Great and Tormenting Secret. The secret—not revealed until the close—is that Asel has murdered two especially depraved "sports" who seemed, on top of it, to have some kind of strangle-hold on Averell. What the reader does learn early on, however, is that three years alone in the wilderness drive Asel to acknowledge his need for Woman. He sets out for New Hampshire, where the middleman has arranged contacts for him, and he ends up living with an erstwhile VISTA volunteer (and now schoolteacher) named Phoebe King, who has troubles of her own (a husband-in-name-only who died in Vietnam; a tyrannical father; an absent mother) that give her, frequently, a tendency to cry. An atmosphere of angst and shapeless foreboding hovers over the lives of Asel and Phoebe ("You know, sometimes I try to figure it all out and I can't"). There will be scenes of farm life; the beery antics of local rustics; a woman who hangs herself in the forest ("We all kill ourselves in the end," philosophizes Asel. "Some of us need help. Some of us don't"); and a scene (impeccably rendered) of Asel butchering an ox as the novel waits sluggishly for its ending to come about: return to the north woods; sudden appearance of central-casting gangsters; shootings and a house on fire; one last murder; and returning Asel's closing embrace with the waiting-at-home Phoebe. Half and half: crisply observed set-pieces robustly written, the whole placed into an ambience of made-for-TV soap.
Pub Date: March 12, 1988
ISBN: 0394757521
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Vintage/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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