STEADY EDDIE

Name: STEADY EDDIE
Author: T. Glen Coughlin
ISBN: 1-56947-221-1

by T. Glen Coughlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2001

Eddie’s an awfully passive protagonist, but Coughlin tells his story with just the right amount of insouciance, bitter...

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Delightfully grungy second novel from Coughlin (The Hero of New York, 1986), a down ’n’ dirty bildungsroman set on Long Island’s grim, hapless, dead-end South Shore, littered with the 1970s detritus of lava lamps, eight-track tape decks, and long nights cruising in muscle cars.

The only child of a dysfunctional family (Dad’s a womanizing pornographer, Mom an alcoholic employee in a laundry), Eddie slices chickens at the local supermarket, working toward the day when he’ll have job security and higher-than-minimum-wage pay as a full-fledged member of the meat-cutters union. At the sour end of a fateful night double-dating with his buddy Loopy, who ferries packages of marijuana and money to New Jersey, Eddie wakes up to find that one of the girls has charged Loopy with rape and named Eddie as an accessory. Of course, our hero is too much of a repressed, guilt-racked 20-something to be guilty, but that doesn’t stop the same local cops who once busted Eddie for stealing coins from parking meters from barging into the meat department and pulling him out in handcuffs. Eddie’s father bails him out, then reveals that Sandra (the girl who cried rape) was turning tricks as a teenager and had posed for a triple-X photo series. Told he can kiss his meat-cutting job goodbye, Eddie retreats to the shelter of a boat his grandfather gave him. Along with is Elena, his date on the night in question, with whom he’s almost falling in love. There’s more trouble on the way, as father and son get into a nasty fight at the local pizzeria and Loopy contemplates marriage to Sandra. But no matter how hopeless, gloomy, or grimy Eddie’s life gets, he learns he can take the bad hand dealt him as long as Elena is by his side.

Eddie’s an awfully passive protagonist, but Coughlin tells his story with just the right amount of insouciance, bitter ironies, and adolescent angst.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-56947-221-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Soho

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.