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
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
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