Summertime in that bucolic retreat, Green Lake, Kansas, and the living is easy—if you don't mind the assortment of perverts and grotesques that Epperson left out of The Neighborhood (1995). Reeling from the suicide of her husband, anthropology professor Madeleine Heron accepts her sister Jacqueline's offer of a cabin in Green Lake. The nearest neighbors, Sherman and Gudrun Tanner, like to dig in their yard (and other people's) so much that Jacqueline calls them Earthworm and Mole Woman. A little further off, there's unemployed Ronnie Lyman, who's just dropped his youngest daughter off at his mother's so he and his wife can pretend she's been kidnapped and angle for publicity and sympathy cash. Of course Madeleine can't forget Bruce Beckworth, the good old boy whose determined advances have to be beaten back by conservation officer Dale Russell, whose smooth good looks and political connections (his aunt is governor of Kansas) would make him a great catch if he weren't a murderous child molester. So there's nobody left for Madeleine, ``dying of boredom and anxiety,'' to take up with but Dale's fellow-officer, Eris Renard, a scarred Sauk-Fox Indian she somehow kindles a romance with despite her diffidence and his sullen reserve. Eris has been looking for years for the birth mother who put him up for adoption, and he finds her just as his affair with Madeleine is at its steamiest. Naturally, she turns out to be just another threat to her peace of mind—a wealthy, possessive artist who wants Eris to come and live with her in Santa Fe and isn't crazy about his fling with a white woman. This volatile cargo of creeps mostly broods on their injuries and resolves to avenge them; the final tally will be five fatalities, no arrests. Even so, Epperson's seventh formula thriller is atypically sunny, with only scattered clouds and little real menace to the heroine. The rest of the cast is too busy killing each other off.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1996
ISBN: 1-55611-493-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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
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