Despite occasionally clunky prose, a tight narrative that adeptly balances raw emotional trauma with compassion and...
In playwright Bishop’s debut novel, teenage Lila’s unexpected, stillborn baby acts as a catalyst in helping a small Australian community heal long-festering emotional wounds.
With the weird grace of a Jane Campion film, this novel balances the potential tear-jerker quality of its story with richly drawn characters. Titular girl Lila handles the birth of her stillborn, premature baby with a surprising aplomb, ducking her teenage brother Jason as he heads out to school and her travel-agent mother Meredith as she rushes off to her unfulfilling job. While Lila fends off a visit by her possessive boyfriend, Dean, with text messages, Meredith internally rehashes the epic failure of her marriage to cad Cliff while flirting with her middle-age co-worker Charles. Meanwhile, Lila’s depressed neighbor Doris is drawn out of her decadeslong funk and into the oddly appropriate role of savior/mentor. Will Meredith allow herself to experience love, as opposed to hanging on to the illusion of glamorized lust? Will the residents of the poverty-stricken Pandora Crescent overcome their failures and begin leading new lives? Although peppered with the occasional cliché— “weak at the knees,” “The wheels of justice,” “her little eyes as round as saucers,” etc.—this novel has a taut, surprising narrative. Bishop has a knack for weaving what could be ponderous back stories into the main thrust of the narrative, thereby rewarding readers instead of punishing them with unnecessary detail. Additionally, while the characters occasionally exhibit somewhat outlandish flourishes, Bishop complements these traits with an unerring sense of human frailty: “Lila could not remember Meredith ever crying again. If she had, it was behind her own closed bedroom door and not in front of her children.” The icky emotional territory of the novel is leavened with compassion and a wry sense of humor, while carefully chosen rural and urban features, from wind storms to the forced intimacy of unimaginative tract housing, subtly move the story forward. Essentially, Bishop plumbs the flawed depths of human regret without relying on manipulative theatrics.
Despite occasionally clunky prose, a tight narrative that adeptly balances raw emotional trauma with compassion and inventive staging.Pub Date: March 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-1452513683
Page Count: 230
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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