Hearon's women, captured in lighthearted to heavy-weather isolation, are often a bit stir-crazy within constricting marriages (Hug Dancing, 1991), or feel in danger of disappearing as ego- shrunk victims of others' cheerful exploitation (the shrewd, funny Owning Jolene, 1988). Here, though, is a more solemn, searching story about two widows who, at 55, examine their long friendship, their loves past and present, marriage—and death. Sarah, whose husband, Nolan, died only months ago, and who continues her work as co-owner of a wallpaper store, leaves her South Carolina home to have a reunion with old school chum Harriet in East Texas. Harriet's husband has been recently killed in an auto accident. To Sarah, marriage was ``an encasement.'' She weeps for Nolan's rotten luck and their falling out but cherishes a new freedom—though it's not complete since, with a legacy of ``life estate'' (which she refuses), Nolan could still ``control her from the grave.'' But like her 78-year-old mother, entomologist Edith, jauntily on her way to Patagonia to study spiders, Sarah is emotionally outward bound. She has sealed palship with Dr. Will Perry, 70. They run their dogs; they make love. On the other hand, Harriet—blond, gorgeous legs, lusciously chic—is devastated by widowhood, scared, and buying guns. She's no longer ``a wife...I'm unemployed.'' On their visits back and forth, other differences- -known but unexamined hitherto—become more acute. Then Harriet is diagnosed with cancer. The two friends will have their last visit, during which Harriet's wild, lonely anguish unexpectedly erupts. At the Texas gravesite, Sarah, now seeing clear Marquand-style, knows, ``People central to your life could vanish. We have so little time, one with another.'' Some characters are drawn in primary colors, and Sarah lectures a bit much; but the portrait of prom girl Harriet is touching and convincing.
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-41539-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
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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