Nothing new here.
Gilmore’s debut novel about a young girl coming of age in a small Southern town.
Ringgold, Ga., is a town as small and Southern as they come. Growing up in the 1970s, the preacher’s daughter, Catherine Grace Cline, dreams of becoming a big-city success as she licks countless Dilly Bars atop the picnic table at the Dairy Queen. The local, Southern-as-pecan-pie dialogue and apparently mandatory use of two first names for every man, woman and child, sound about as flaky as church-going matriarch Ida Belle Fletcher’s baptism-day brownies. However, the town comes to life through vivid, albeit unoriginal, characters. The spoiled classmate with a perfectly placed barrette, the town gossip, the beautiful Sunday school teacher and the bookish sister, while entertaining, are too prosaic to be engaging. Though the Church plays a motivating role—Catherine’s deeply religious and charismatic father raises her and her sister on biblical parables—the story never delves into a profound discussion of faith. Catherine finds herself in a conflicting relationship with God throughout her youth, but the narrative sticks mainly to pat revelations. As Catherine grows older, Gilmore struggles to maintain a consistent narrative voice, which jarringly jumps from girlish to womanly. Even with the unladylike qualities of a fiery temper and a quick mouth, Catherine manages to win the love of the most popular boy in town, but as many female protagonists have done before her, she originally shuns him to pursue her own dreams. On her 18th birthday, Catherine escapes to Atlanta, only to be called back home by tragedy. In a not-so-surprising twist, the author delivers the same lesson we’ve heard before: the greatest journeys are those that lead you home again.
Nothing new here.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-39501-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
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
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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