Ten generally engaging stories from Midwestern writer Rindo (Suburban Metaphysics, 1990), cleverly satirizing the truths and illusions we hold dear while portraying individual Americans with compassion and humor. In the tragic yet hilarious ``The Blue Heron,'' an unhinged widower collects exotic pets and winds up with 37, plus one blue heron. His son finally calls in the animal welfare people, but realizes, when his father locks himself indoors and shoots at the raiders' cars, that the old man has become ``Noah the terrorist in his land-locked ark,'' all in the name of lost love. The ironic ``Ten Things I've Heard That I Believe'' shows a college professor of American folklore becoming a legend himself by confessing in class that he has cancer, shacking up with three women students, and wearing a bandanna to hide the effects of chemotherapy and an earring ``to complete the look.'' When you have cancer you can do anything, he reasons, yet discovers his that ``lifetime of scrupulous observation'' hasn't prepared him for death. One of Rindo's funniest tales, ``Taxidermy and Infidelities,'' involves a son and father who meet for a reconciliatory picnic at their mother/wife's grave on the eve of Dad's fifth marriage. Though angry at his irresponsible behavior towards his children, the son comes to marvel at his passionate love of life, most memorably expressed in his relationship with wife number four, a taxidermist who ravished him while he was strapped naked to the roof of a car. Some stories, like ``Aliens,'' reflect the author's ability to handle a variety of narrative voices. Others, including ``Women in the Woods,'' provide suspense but end on frustratingly ambiguous notes. Nevertheless, Rindo has a knack for describing the absurd details that give lives meaning. Freakish, darkly comic, and utterly contemporary.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-89823-163-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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