Nothing new, really (the secret kept by one generation from another may not satisfy wholly once it’s revealed), but well and...
British author of the extraordinary Mendel’s Dwarf (1998) returns with a much more ordinary tale of star-crossed love.
The Welsh Guy Matthewson is widely known as a climber by the time the considerably younger Diana Sheridan—on a walking tour with friends—meets the famous man, goes climbing alone with him, stays overnight in his hotel—and falls hopelessly in love, as he does with her. But there are problems. It’s 1940, Diana will soon be a nurse in London, and not only does Guy face the trials of being a conscientious objector (though he switches later), but he’s married—to a German wife who left him two years before and returned to Germany with their young daughter. Diana can’t believe he’ll ever be free to marry her, and so ends the affair (by letter) when she finds she’s pregnant—and never tells him that she aborted their own infant daughter before entering her loveless and short-lived marriage with a doctor. She doesn’t even tell him about it when they happen to meet once more, after the war—Guy by now married to the good-looking Meg, as sexually loose as Diana is contained—and have a last passionate night of true love. All of this is told in flashbacks from the 1960s and later, in a story about the intimate friendship between Diana’s son, Rob Dewar, and Meg’s son, Jamie Matthewson. The two will climb together—Jamie will go on later to achieve truly enormous international fame—until an accident takes Rob off the Alpine faces and puts him into the art gallery business. Years pass, then decades—and only with the deadly fall alluded to by the title will past mysteries finally be revealed.
Nothing new, really (the secret kept by one generation from another may not satisfy wholly once it’s revealed), but well and skillfully done: the landscapes are wonderful, the history sharp, the climbing scenes awesome.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-09780-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 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
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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