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SUMMER GLOVES

Name: SUMMER GLOVES
Author: Sarah Gilbert
ISBN: 0-446-51689-9

by Sarah Gilbert ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 1993

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A former beauty queen wrestles with her roles of daughter, mother, and wife of an adulterer—in Gilbert's funny, at times insightful, novel (Hairdo, Dixie Riggs). Pammy Outlaw, ex-Miss South Carolina, is slim and beautiful, mother of a beautiful, smart 12-year-old, but her life is a nightmare. Handsome husband Flick, formerly a good provider, has gone back to school for his Ph.D. in lit; she, meanwhile, has no intellectual pretensions—we get to hear Flick deconstruct a fish tank—but it still hurts when Flick and his new friends snub her. Furthermore, Flick complains about the expense of Pammy's dragging daughter Evie on the same sort of beauty pageant circuit that made Pammy's childhood miserable. Then Pammy finds Flick's hotel bill from a liaison with a fellow grad student...so it's home to mother, the ex-Miss New Jersey. We learn that Pammy has often fantasized killing her mother with hatchets, yet she says, ``...the greatest love in the world is the love that goes on between a mother and a daughter and it never makes any sense at all.'' As Evie approaches puberty, we also learn that Pammy had an abortion at 13. Now, a pair of summer gloves handed down through the women of the family are given to Pammy by her mother, to supplement the rest of the handed-down burdens, like fear of food and a warped self-image. To top if off, her mother has entered the three of them in a grandmother-mother-daughter beauty contest. Pammy's good-girl self says she should get back together with the joyless Flick, but instead she has a fling with Sam—a middle-aged pilot and lawyer with sexy hands—and, eventually, learns to ``fly'' on her own. A rollicking good farce, if told by a somewhat unreliable, self-contradictory—and occasionally tiresomely repetitive— narrator.

Pub Date: April 23, 1993

ISBN: 0-446-51689-9

Page Count: 208

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993

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.