Predictable fare, but first-novelist Gertler offers a tender evocation of lost love, and what it means to find it again.
A mother of four daydreams about the boy she loved when she was 16—and sets out to find him.
Emily Hudson’s life seems perfect: husband Peter is a successful attorney and their four children are unnaturally well-behaved. She even finds time to paint now and then in her attic studio. But the passion went out of her marriage years ago, and workaholic Peter barely seems to know she’s alive. It's not surprising, then, that her thoughts turn to her first love, Jimmy Moran, and the blissful summer of 1967 that the two spent in New York. When his unfeeling, alcoholic, rich father pulled Jimmy out of private school and forced him to join the Marines, Emily was upset, naturally, but helpless to intervene. Then she ran into Jimmy outside her apartment building after his stint in boot camp: he was no longer the tender boy she was sweet on but, rather, a rough young soldier. So Emily, a budding peace activist, makes up a story about losing her virginity to someone else, and the two part company, hurt and confused. In Vietnam, Jimmy is profoundly traumatized by the slaughter and hypocrisy he sees. He returns and drifts through a series of dead-end jobs while Emily, knowing nothing of this, marries Peter and moves to Connecticut. As years pass, she toys with the idea of finding Jimmy—and, in due time, he and she reunite, in Washington, D.C., at the Vietnam Memorial. They’re inexorably drawn to each other, of course, for a weekend of explanations, lovemaking, and nostalgia. Will Jim return to his long-suffering wife and adopted daughter? Will Emily shock her husband out of his withdrawn complacency? Will these two troubled souls find happiness and get on with their lives?
Predictable fare, but first-novelist Gertler offers a tender evocation of lost love, and what it means to find it again.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-94565-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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