An enjoyable page-turner with a reluctant hero who’s as engaging as he is impulsive.
Life begins to spin out of control for a 49-year-old man in this debut novel about a midlife coming-of-age.
Jesse Few is a salesman whose carefree, man-child days of drinking and philandering have caught up with him. As the successful sales and marketing department manager at Papier Mondiale, a large French corporation with a base in Atlanta, Georgia, Jesse finds his work demoralizing, as he spends too much time laying off salesmen. His thrice-widowed, 81-year-old mother, who has a great fondness for her afternoon cocktails, is suffering from the early stages of dementia; his sideline real estate investment business is tanking after the 2008 economic collapse; and his son, JJ, has just been arrested for drunk driving. Worse yet, JJ’s 17-year-old girlfriend, Melanie, was in the car with him, and her father, Pastor Sonny of the First Baptist Church of Dwyer, is a former member of a motorcycle gang—and he’s not amused. McCondichi endows his protagonist with a good deal more depth than initial impressions would indicate. For example, he gradually reveals Jesse’s sympathetic back story over the course of the narrative, and also shows his genuine devotion to his mother (“Somehow, his mother was going to be the first one he helped”); Jesse eventually uncovers a dark secret that’s been tormenting her, releasing her from terrifying hallucinations. He also bravely embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue his son from the clutches of Sonny and his paid minions. The narrative moves at a good clip as Jesse navigates his way through one crisis after another, among a fully developed cast of supporting characters. Along the way, he figures out how to become the adult that his aging mother and teenage children truly need him to be.
An enjoyable page-turner with a reluctant hero who’s as engaging as he is impulsive.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9979518-0-6
Page Count: 310
Publisher: SFK Press
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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