The depth of the characters, the questions they ask and the challenge they confront stay with the reader long after the...
In one of the richer efforts by the veteran novelist, a compelling setup and stunning conclusion compensate for the thematic navel gazing through the middle.
Spencer returns to the scene of A Ship Made of Paper (2003), a novel that elicited some of his best reviews, bringing back writer Kate Ellis, her daughter, Ruby, and their hometown of Leyden, N.Y. Yet this novel isn’t exactly a sequel and can be read independently of the earlier work. Its protagonist is Paul Phillips, a master craftsman who refuses to compromise either his carpentry or his principles. He has become Kate’s lover and a surrogate father to Ruby after doing some work at their house. The divorced Kate, previously a newspaper reporter, is now the bestselling author of Prays Well with Others, an inspirational account of her recovering alcoholism and embrace of faith. With hints of Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott in “her kind of Christianity, one that includes a fair amount of swearing and swagger, left-of-center politics, and all the sex your average heathen would enjoy,” she has come to believe that her life has a plan, purpose and meaning, and that the love she shares with Paul is an essential part of that divine will. A Dostoyevskian complication drives the plot, as chance (or is it fate?) leads Paul to tragedy—an encounter with a stranger in the woods, a man beating his dog, that will change the lives of all concerned and upset the delicate balance that Kate and Paul have come to believe is their destiny. Ultimately, the novel’s title could refer as much to Paul, who must come to terms with the man he has become, after he did what he never believed he could. What seems to some like “a universe in which the pieces fit together beautifully” just might be “a universe where nothing is guaranteed and nothing can stop bad things from happening.”
The depth of the characters, the questions they ask and the challenge they confront stay with the reader long after the conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-146655-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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
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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