Mysteries sacred and profane—daughter Clare may have murdered her husband—are provocatively plumbed as the high-minded Kerslakes gather for their holiday in Scotland. Here, Maitland's usual feminist concerns (Virgin Territory, 1986, etc.) are secondary to questions of religious faith and how to live life to the fullest—suitable questions for a novel that, despite its progressive sympathies, is reminiscent of another era. It's an era when upper-class families gather on ancestral ground to confide, confess, and resolve family crises with minimal ill- feeling and melodrama. Clare Kerslake, an adopted member of this civilized world—her beautiful mother had been James Kerslake's sister—is haunted by the childhood memory of seeing her parents laughing together before they died in an explosion. Now 30-ish, she is recovering from an accident in which, while climbing a dangerous mountain in Zimbabwe, she lost her memory and her right hand. She may also have killed husband David there—at least that's what she told her African rescuers. While the family try to help Clare remember—all she recalls is wanting David dead—they also address the problems of son Ben, an Anglican priest recently defrocked because he's gay, and daughter Felicity, who cannot accept her child's deafness. Expeditions are arranged to prod Clare's memory, but it is only when youngest sister Ceci, a nun, asserts that God is all that is beautiful and dangerous that Clare begins to understand herself and a little of what happened. She'd renounced a lesbian lover out of fear; she'd been afraid of David, of climbing. Now she can go back to Zimbabwe, confront the mountain, and always ``dance near the edge of destruction, willing to fall because it was beautiful.'' Intelligent if earnest writing as Maitland fearlessly tackles the great mysteries: an often old-fashioned novel that is also an affecting story of love in its infinite variety.
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2536-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
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
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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