Back in Baltimore to pick up an honorary Ph.D. from his alma mater, Calvert College, novelist Tom Fallon recalls the wild year of 1965, when he wriggled out from under the patronage of elitist Professor Sylvester Spaulding and came under the spell of Jeremy Raines—con artist, lunatic, and entrepreneur—and the inmates of his communal house.... Jeremy is the inventor of the Identi-Card, a photo ID he markets to area colleges, with consistently maladroit results: the photos are misframed, or matched with the wrong names, or melted in the laminating machine. But charismatic Jeremy, ever in search of new funding, inveigles his loyal housemates—a Baltimore Brando, Eddie Eckel; health-food nut Babe McCallister; Sister Lulu Hardwell; and self-styled Beat poet Val Jackson—into shouldering his burdens and bailing him out of comic confrontations with Johns Hopkins president A. Taft Manley, Kodak front-man Alan Saxon-Hogg, and gangster Rudy Antonelli (not to mention such minor interlopers as crowbar-wielding Dan the Trucker, demanding that Sister Lulu, thrown out of the convent following an unlikely fling, return to his bed and board). As long as Ward (Red Baker, 1985, etc.) sticks to retailing Jeremy's shenanigans, Tom's affectionate reminiscences are often hilarious, but when he turns to the life lessons imparted by Tom's squabbling parents or his sophomoric rebellion against Dr. Spaulding or the kind of ``pure schematic bullshit'' that comes out in intense, run-on epiphanies or apothegms (``After only one maniacal afternoon with this madman, my entire emotional center had been displaced'')—then Ward, a generally successfully light humorist, gets stranded past his depth. And he gives short weight on his secondary characters—particularly his women, who do little more than change into a series of increasingly tight outfits for sex or photo ops. Affable and amusing, if, unlike the author, you don't take it too seriously.
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-79568-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
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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