Recommended for adventurous book clubs and lovers of reader’s theater.
A brief but emotionally weighty collection of imaginary dialogues inspired by the work of American psychotherapist Ira Progoff, who, in the 1960s, popularized therapeutic journaling as a means of self-discovery.
Many readers may have a vague notion of what a Socratic dialogue is: a prose literary form in which characters discuss moral and philosophical problems. French philosopher Denis Diderot and writers Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde and Aldous Huxley all produced fine examples that predate the self-help industry’s generally dolorous take, and there have been stellar contemporary versions by Canadian poet Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, 1998) and the Pulitzer Prize–winning A.R. Gurney (Love Letters, 1989). In this intensely personal collection, Mulhern (Seventeen Steps to the Edge, 2011) stages a series of chats with various archetypes (Death, his Future Self, Time) about metaphysics and overcrowding; with possibly real people (Abe the Auschwitz survivor, two suicide hotline callers) who discuss love, regret, hope, despair and other topics; and with some tricky personifications (Addiction, Obsession/Compulsion, Silence) who ponder pretty much everything else. The author sets all of these dialogues in the void name-checked in the book’s title; “In fact,” he clarifies in the introduction, “it seems to me that the abyss is that which lies just beyond the borders of our sanity, our longings and the familiar illusions we think of as our lives.” While such Twilight Zone–inflected intellectual musings may not appeal to some readers, the author’s charming sincerity and surprisingly light touch keep it all from becoming impenetrable, whether his characters discuss the Holocaust or the intricate origins of a man’s foot fetish. The best debates offer up truths with a dash of sly, vaudeville humor, like a mashup of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett as declaimed by Abbott and Costello; for example, witness the author’s double act with Time: “SM: Is there time after we die? / Time: There is no such thing before you die. Everything exists at once. / SM: What happens to all the atoms in the universe when it finally dies? / Time: They apply for unemployment. / SM: Seriously?”
Recommended for adventurous book clubs and lovers of reader’s theater.Pub Date: March 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1770978904
Page Count: 104
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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