Lively writing, brisk pacing and a likable narrator fill out this promising debut.
A newlywed uncovers some unsettling family secrets in this debut novel.
Thirty-six-year-old Anne Kinsman’s visit to her best friend Winkie near Milwaukee turns into a surprise bridal shower. Guests include her mother, two sisters and high school classmates she hasn’t seen in the 18 years since her graduation in 1964. Despite her considerable success as a fashion designer, at the party, she reverts to “Anne-the-Elephant,” deflecting mean-spirited comments about her low weight and lifelong dieting. Her 55-year-old Jewish fiance, Barry, owner of a line of upscale women’s boutiques, finds her size less troubling than her virginity, which she’s determined to cling to until after the marriage vows. Soon after the shower, the couple receives troubling news: The promiscuous Winkie is dead under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind an abusive husband and a perceptive 11-year-old girl, Anne’s goddaughter. Winkie’s death proves to be the loose thread that unwinds years of secrets. Anne’s strong narrative voice guides the story through WASP family get-togethers, newlywed clashes and office politics, offering pointed observations about relationships. “I love my father. I used to like him,” she says. She also weaves in considerable, sometimes catty, fashion commentary. Anne’s reaction after Winkie’s death is particularly well-drawn, showing the types of nonsensical thoughts that accompany the shock of death: “Ding-dong, the Winkie’s dead. Which old Wink? The Winkie-Wink.” In contrast, Barry’s family history tales, repeated more than once almost verbatim, don’t have the same ring of truth as Anne’s. However, they do echo the novel’s underlying exploration of how well you can truly know another person and what lies behind the facade of perfection. The book’s genre is a bit muddled: An early, long sex scene promises a steamy, romantic bend, while Winkie’s mysterious death hints at a possible crime or mystery thread. Neither genre is fully embraced, but as the book progresses, the distinction doesn’t matter. The excellent pacing—except for the dragging denouement containing the last of the family secrets—helps make for an easy, satisfying read.
Lively writing, brisk pacing and a likable narrator fill out this promising debut.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477423011
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.
Walker (In Love and Trouble, Meridian) has set herself the task of an epistolary novel—and she scores strongly with it.
The time is in the Thirties; a young, black, Southern woman named Celie is the primary correspondent (God being her usual addressee); and the life described in her letters is one of almost impossible grimness. While young, Celie is raped by a stepfather. (Even worse, she believes him to be her real father.) She's made to bear two children that are then taken away from her. She's married off without her consent to an older man, Albert, who'd rather have Celie's sister Nettie—and, by sacrificing her body to Albert without love or feeling, Celie saves her sister, making it possible for her to escape: soon Nettle goes to Africa to work as a Christian missionary. Eventually, then, halfway through the book, as Celie's sub-literate dialect letters to God continue to mount (eventually achieving the naturalness and intensity of music, equal in beauty to Eudora Welty's early dialect stories), letters from Nettie in Africa begin to arrive. But Celie doesn't see them—because Albert holds them back from her. And it's only when Celie finds an unlikely redeemer—Albert's blues-singer lover Shug Avery—that her isolation ends: Shug takes Celie under her wing, becomes Celie's lover as well as Albert's; Shug's strength and expansiveness and wisdom finally free up Nettie's letters—thus granting poor Celie a tangible life in the now (Shug's love, encouragement) as well as a family life, a past (Nettie's letters). Walker fashions this book beautifully—with each of Celie's letters slowly adding to her independence (the implicit feminism won't surprise Walker's readers), with each letter deepening the rich, almost folk-tale-ish sense of story here. And, like an inverted pyramid, the novel thus builds itself up broadeningly while balanced on the frailest imaginable single point: the indestructibility—and battered-ness—of love.
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.Pub Date: June 28, 1982
ISBN: 0151191549
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing...
The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.).
Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in “Pharmacy,” which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she’s not exactly patient with shy young people—or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in “Incoming Tide” with the news that her father, like Kevin’s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in “Starving,” though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout’s rueful tales. The Kitteridges’ son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn’t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive’s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in “Winter Concert” has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout’s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life’s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, “It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”
A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
PERSPECTIVES
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