Timid and superficial.
A teacher seduces a senior at a New England prep school.
Ethan Whitley is new at Berkley Academy in rural Massachusetts. The 17-year-old has transferred from California, where his parents are Stanford professors. His mother has cancer and wants to spare him her suffering. Ethan is not a good fit with the rich kids and the jocks, but he strikes up a friendship with Todd Eldon, who seems to have it all: a pretty, sexually experienced girlfriend and a sophisticated, moneyed background (his mother is a popular novelist in New York City). Underneath, however, Todd is as insecure as Ethan. He is attracted to the Californian’s smarts, and his body, for Todd’s sexual preferences are changing; soon he will dump his girlfriend and make advances toward Ethan, who’s not interested; he’s a virgin, but resolutely straight. Complicating the picture is 36-year-old Hannah McClellan, an English teacher who on the side bakes desserts for the local tearoom. In his second novel (The Trouble Boy, 2004), London-born Dolby tells two coming-of-age stories (one would have been enough) while focusing on teacher-student infatuation, a story line that stretches back to the 1953 Broadway hit Tea and Sympathy. Hannah likes them young and guess what, so did the school’s female founder, who also seduced a 17-year-old. Though sex is the core of the novel, Dolby is reticent about the details, deflecting attention to Hannah’s lurid past in Paris, where she made out with her stepson (her French husband had been cheating on her); the affair ended with the kid’s suicide. Nothing so melodramatic happens this time, though when Ethan tries to extricate himself from her suffocating intensity, Hannah uses her wiles to keep him, even faking pregnancy. When it’s clear not even her scrumptious blueberry cobbler will work, she abruptly leaves the school and is not heard from again, allowing Ethan to start over at Yale. Can healing and closure be far behind?
Timid and superficial.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7582-2258-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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