None
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Kansas again, Toto, Epperson (The Moons of Summer, 1994, etc.) ladles up another middle-American passel of sociopaths, felons, and just plain weirdos. There must be something in the water: Practically everybody in Epperson's judiciously unnamed Kansas neighborhood is up to something unspeakable. Riverpark Hospital chief of staff Clyde Conlan has taken his stricken brother Thomas home to die without telling Thomas's private nurse of his fear that her patient has smallpox. Craig Peterwell, who really likes birds, goes home from his Riverpark maintenance job to a wife whose carping he's had just about enough of. Craig is watched to varying effect by Mark Vaughn, a former burglar who's still out for the odd score, and by Chance Morley, a retarded adult who's the obvious suspect in the disappearance of 12-year-old Cyndi Melo. In this tinderbox, it's only a matter of time before something gives, and the something is Louise Peterwell's legs when Craig suddenly swings at her with a two-by-four, provoking an oddly related chain of reactions both ghoulish and funny. (Funniest moments: Chance setting Craig's birds free because he thinks he hears them pleading to get out; Craig dutifully consulting a psychiatrist and deciding he needs to put his relationship with Louise on a more positive basis.) In fact, Zane Campbell, the ex-cop who turned ocularist when a bullet rearranged his own face, and his two relatively normal boys have such a ripe basket of loonies to pick from that the revelation of who snatched (and killed) Cyndi is inevitably anticlimactic—any of these folks could have done it, no problem. It would take a Carl Hiaasen to sustain the demented tone of this feverish fantasy to the end, but you have to admire the unbridled imagination that peopled Epperson's neighborhood—even if you wouldn't want to risk living next door to the author yourself.
None NonePub Date: Nov. 27, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-466-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
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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