WITHOUT HER

Name: WITHOUT HER
Author: Rosalind Brackenbury
ISBN: 978-1-88328579-1

by Rosalind Brackenbury ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2019

The author’s delicate touch captures the head if not the heart of this meditation on loyalty, friendship, and the geometry...

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A lifelong friendship turns more complicated and murky when the disappearance of one of the women leads to unwelcome discoveries and a reconfiguration.

Passions supposedly run high in Brackenbury’s (The Lost Love Letters of Henri Fournier, 2018, etc.) latest novel—there's the sexual intensity of a long love affair; the decision to risk everything for a career in filmmaking; jealousy and competitiveness between women friends. And yet little of this fire ignites the pages of what is a steady, cool, thoughtful novel charting the relationship between Hannah Farrell and Claudia Prescott across the decades. The pair bonded at an English boarding school and remained BFFs through the college years at Cambridge and beyond. A trip to Europe during which they met Alexandre, an attractive student, did set up some tension between the women, but Hannah, the more mysterious of the two, solved the dilemma by walking away, leaving Alexandre to Claudia. Despite other occasional disappearances later in life, Hannah opted for a traditional track as wife to Philip and mother to twins. Claudia, however, struck out for California to try her hand as a moviemaker before eventually settling as a teacher of film studies at a college in Virginia, with Alexandre as her distant, occasional, yet lifelong lover. The two women stayed in touch and visited annually, but now Hannah has failed to show up as expected at the family holiday home, and Claudia is summoned by Philip. When Hannah does reappear, the not entirely unpredictable pieces of the story fall neatly into place. A final episode imports its own inherent intensity, yet it is in the small gestures that the story achieves some resonance.

The author’s delicate touch captures the head if not the heart of this meditation on loyalty, friendship, and the geometry of human interconnection.

Pub Date: July 23, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-88328579-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Delphinium

Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.