Decently done but unremarkable: second-novelist Averill (Secrets of the Tsil Café, 2001) creates some memorable characters...
A fair-to-middling coming-of-ager set in Kansas, where the flatness of the plains can’t obscure the dark shadows of family secrets cast long ago in Scotland.
Glasgow, Kansas, has very little in common with its Scottish counterpart other than its name and the presence of Rob MacPherson. Born and reared in the Gorbals slums of the old Glasgow, Rob came to the new one in 1952 with his infant son Ewan in tow. Mourning his wife (who’d died in childbirth while crossing the Atlantic and was buried at sea) and homesick for his native land, Rob manages to settle into life in the new world, finding work at the post office and acquiring some renown for his skill with the bagpipes as well as the ladies. Ewan, by contrast, grows up a quiet and reserved young man not much given to his father’s favorite pastimes of whiskey and adultery. He does fall in love, though, with Shirley Porter—the daughter of one of Rob’s many conquests. After high school, Ewan and Shirley court scandal by moving in with each other while still unmarried, an arrangement that Rob encourages, somewhat to his son’s surprise. When Ewan discovers Shirley and his father in flagrante delicto, his surprise turns to outrage. He can break off with Shirley (and does), but he’s stuck with his father, an untrustworthy jerk but the only blood kin Ewan has left in the world. Or so he thinks: The discovery of a secret family album gives Ewan a new and unsuspected insight into his origins and leads him to retrace his father’s steps back to Glasgow in search of his mother. The truth, when it comes, is as sad as family secrets can be—but it explains a lot more than the past.
Decently done but unremarkable: second-novelist Averill (Secrets of the Tsil Café, 2001) creates some memorable characters but does little with them, and the lost-mother theme seems very old hat by now.Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-425-19081-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: BlueHen/Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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