Hawthorne’s debut novel follows a Cape Cod lawyer who defends a mute old woman with memory loss in her trial for a 50-year-old murder in a hostile Southern town.
Olivia St. Clair, 72, is a successful, mute sculptress living the twilight of her life on Cape Cod. One day, however, she’s suddenly arrested and whisked away to a South Carolina town to face murder charges in the death of her wealthy industrialist lover, who died more than 50 years ago in a mysterious factory fire. To defend her, she hires John Bartlemas, a Cape Cod lawyer with little criminal experience. Bartlemas is dealing with his own personal problems, for which he needs money, but what he expects will be a quick guilty plea and probation for St. Clair turns into a desperate fight for her life when the local district attorney unexpectedly asks for the death penalty. Bartlemas finds himself not only struggling with a mute client and her poor memory, but also a prejudiced Southern town that would like nothing better than to see his client dead. Hawthorne has written a sleek, stylish murder mystery with a sharp focus that never loses sight of the main plot even as it takes occasional detours into subplots, each adding to the story’s enjoyment and understanding. Although this is his debut, Hawthorne, a former attorney, avoids the trap of stuffing the book full of everything he knows, and the story moves along briskly. The book perfectly captures the “fish out of water” element felt by Bartlemas and St. Clair in a suspicious town and legal system that views the Northerners as haughty Yankees trying to hoodwink them. Among the small yet memorable cast, Bartlemas is well-defined, but perhaps the most interesting is St. Clair. Questions surround her yet remain unanswered even as the case is tried and the mystery revealed. Another book featuring one or both of them could fill in the gaps—a return most readers would welcome.
Strong characters, an intriguing story, and a brisk pace make for a highly readable legal thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9863346-0-3
Page Count: 203
Publisher: Book Baby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
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Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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