Earnest and engaging: a nicely turned-out if unsurprising debut that’s not likely to stay in a reader’s mind for long.
A twentysomething man comes of age somewhat belatedly, in part by discovering an old man’s secret past.
Nathan Carter is a true Boston Brahmin, but there wasn’t much silver left on the baby’s spoon by the time he was born, and his childhood was far from privileged. Now a thirtysomething slacker, Nathan spent most of his 20s hanging out in Boston, where he waited tables and moved passionlessly from one short-term girlfriend to another. When his father died and left him a small inheritance, Nathan took the money and left town, heading up to northern Vermont and settling in the small town of Eden. There, he took a job as a mailman and started going out with Kate, the daughter of the local tavernkeeper. It was beginning to look like a rural rerun of Boston—until Nathan met Wallace Fiske, the town recluse. An old Vermonter, Wallace grew up in Eden and worked his family’s farm on the outskirts of town. Ornery and brusque (even by New England standards), Wallace is not easy to make friends with, but he eventually opens up to Nathan and slowly, piece by piece, reveals to him the story of his life. The focus of it is Nora, Wallace’s late wife, whom Wallace fell in love with on first sight in the late 1940s. Wallace is short on details but he describes the miscarriage that broke Nora’s heart and took her will to live. What Nathan finds out on his own, however, is that Nora is, in fact, alive and well in upstate New York, long estranged from Wallace. What went wrong? Nathan and Kate are impulsive types, so they visit Nora to find out. It’s a predictably sad story, involving death, adultery, betrayal, and despair. Typical backwoods Vermont, in other words.
Earnest and engaging: a nicely turned-out if unsurprising debut that’s not likely to stay in a reader’s mind for long.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4427-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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