Splendid images and prose, but too much is left unsaid, leaving a splintered story at the core.
Dodd takes a sliver from the life of expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) and creates an odd, claustrophobic fictionalized biography.
Wounded and shell-shocked after WWI, Oskar takes a teaching position at the Dresden Academy and residence with the local art museum’s director. The gentlemanly Herr Posse hopes that a calming routine and a steady diet of his young housekeeper Hulda's hearty cooking will restore Oskar to health and painting. It’s not war that has driven the artist to the brink of madness, it’s Alma Mahler’s marriage to Walter Gropius. Oskar was Alma’s lover before the war; in fact, he enlisted to impress her. Now abandoned by the notorious Viennese beauty, Oskar becomes fanatically attached to her memory and obsessed with the idea of a “silent woman.” He commissions a dollmaker to create a life-sized replica of his Alma—only quieter, kinder, and more pliant. Then he enlists Herr Posse's housekeeper, whom he’s casually renamed Reserl, to serve as lady's maid to his big doll. They pretend “Madame” is alive, serving her dinner, styling her hair, dressing her for bed. The heartache behind this absurd behavior is obvious to Reserl, the true silent woman, who is secretly in love with the tortured Oskar and willing to debase herself to win his favor. She falls under the full brunt of Madame's demanding requests and suffers with the knowledge that Oskar’s eyes always look a few inches past her, even when she is sharing his bed. The art teacher who tells his students that they must really see is himself blind to reality. Dodd has intriguing material here (there was in fact an Alma doll, first mentioned in a 1986 Kokoschka biography), and she creates a restrained portrait of obsession, Oskar's and Reserl’s. But restraint seems a poor tool with which to explore passion.
Splendid images and prose, but too much is left unsaid, leaving a splintered story at the core.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-17000-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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