Novelist Minot delivers a second collection of well-tuned fictions (after Crossings, 1975, not reviewed)—all perfectly balanced in their ability to evoke, enchant, and engage. As the title suggests, the 12 stories here focus on the powerful, often corrosive effect that time's passage can have on memories and our expectations. The volume is divided into three parts: ``Bending Time and Memory,'' in which the characters are inextricably bound to the past; ``Time in Exile,'' which reveals the disjointed lives of Americans living abroad; and ``Time in the American City.'' ``The Senator's Son'' (in Part III) subtly depicts the strained relationship between a prominent US senator and his estranged, antiestablishment son, the two now brought together for the funeral of the young man's mother. Their futile tug-of-war, with the senator trying to reclaim his golden boy of the past, with his beach bum son negating his father's dreams at every turn, ends with a pathetic arm-wrestling contest to determine control. Some of the most compelling pieces focus on Americans living in exile, literally and emotionally. ``Exiles'' portrays the bittersweet reunion of a son and his father on the latter's 70th birthday. All the players in the story are exiles of some sort: Robert's father has spent the last 35 years in Geneva as an academic; Robert lives in Paris with his wife, who herself feels disconnected from her rural hometown; and finally there's their friend Sigmund, German and black, who feels lost and without a homeland. ``A Death in Paris'' begins with the death of Victor, a longtime Paris resident famous for his generosity and charm, and follows the alarming discoveries about Victor and his double life made by two of his old American friends. What they find throws into question the validity of their memories and of the past itself. A fine example of the power and resonance of short fiction.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-877946-96-6
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
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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