Every tragedy is inevitable in Novack’s precise, often beautiful debut.
In this debut novel from three-time Pushcart Prize nominee Novack, a ten-year-old girl’s disappearance and a mother’s abandonment slowly shred the fabric of life in a small Pennsylvania town.
Life for nine-year-old Sissy and her big sister Eva appears normal. The ’70s are progressing, and both girls are growing up. For Sissy, that means learning to differentiate between the stories her mother told and reality, and sometimes even minding her sister. For 17-year-old Eva, the passage of time means a progression from fast sex with the eager, fickle boys of her high school to a full-blown affair with a married teacher. Both are reeling from recent tragedies; the disappearance and assumed abduction of Sissy’s best friend-turned-enemy Vicki and also the departure of their beautiful, troubled mother, Natalia. What they can’t know is that these events spring from deeper grief: Vicki’s father was a troubled Vietnam veteran, a suicide who left her mother alone with the bottle. Natalia, meanwhile, is a Holocaust survivor, the only member of her family to make it out, thanks to the cold kindness of a German family who wanted a child: “I don’t mind that you’re a Gyp,” her new mother had told her. “I always wanted a little girl.” For all the supposed normalcy of their little town, the repercussions of grief and loss are everywhere. In the hands of Novack, these echoes are as inexorable as tides, and they permeate this book with a deep sadness. Although the pacing is slow, the characters come alive in the details. Sissy’s fantasies, alternating between rescue and revenge, and Eva’s dreams of love and escape are revealed in a naturalistic progression. Even the inarticulate Frank, Natalia’s abandoned husband, has his moment of clarity: “At least metal doesn’t shrink away from you.”
Every tragedy is inevitable in Novack’s precise, often beautiful debut.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6680-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
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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