A well-paced narrative palpably evokes America’s stormy past.
A turbulent decade reverberates throughout two women’s lives.
The 1960s, as some chroniclers have noted, were nothing less than days of rage for many young men and women suddenly awakened to troubling political realities: overt racism and a violent, divisive war, both provoking an urgent pressure to act morally, to take a stand, “to dig out the rot.” But the upheaval of the '60s was not only political: Especially for women, ethical choices were complicated by love, sex, and, not least, money. White (A Place at the Table, 2013, etc.) handles that complexity with gentleness and empathy in a novel that follows the divergent paths of two friends: Evelyn Elliot Whalen, the cosseted daughter of wealthy, politely racist Atlantans, and Daniella Gold a middle-class, liberal Unitarian whose father is a Jewish professor. In 1962, they happily find themselves roommates at a small Southern women’s college that, the girls discover, holds onto some discomfiting customs: The top sorority refuses to accept Jews, for one; and African American maids, living in the basement of each residence house, clean students’ bedrooms and do their laundry. Eve, eager to take up a cause, protests their working conditions to the college’s headmaster, a gesture that backfires, as the more circumspect and pragmatic Daniella knew it would. Her “silly friend,” she reflects, “thought she could splash and kick her way into an ocean of oppression and instantly change the tide.” Eve continues to kick and splash after they both move to New York, become involved in CORE, and apply to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in registering voters in Mississippi. Daniella worries about the danger: “We should only take actions that are safe?” Eve asks, a question they continue to confront as they struggle to shape their role in the world. Drawing on memoirs, biographies, and histories, White vividly portrays the fractious radicals—such as Eve’s arrogant, manipulative lover—dedicated to smashing “bourgeois notions and attitudes” as well as the trajectory that some of those ardent rebels took in the 1970s and '80s.
A well-paced narrative palpably evokes America’s stormy past.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0891-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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