Pearson can’t resist some comic set pieces worthy of his best fiction: low humor involving backwoods infidelity, trashy...
Fans of Pearson’s six wonderful novels, especially of his Carolina trilogy and Cry Me a River (1993), may find his latest disappointing. The prose here is leaner, with little narrative expansiveness and less backslapping geniality.
One reason for the shift in tone is a matter of design: Pearson shifts back and forth between two stories, and only one is in the first person. And that speaker isn’t given to much verbal dexterity; after all, he’s a dull actuary in a Roanoke insurance office who suddenly learns that the biological son he barely knows has turned up dead in New York City. Paul Tatum “sired the boy back in ’73 when people were freer with their ardor,” and has no clue that his trip to identify the body will entangle him in a web of urban drug intrigue, with its sense of “creeping moral desolation.” Meanwhile, Ray Tatum, Paul’s cousin, who’s left behind a marriage and a dead young daughter in Mobile, Alabama, takes a new job as a deputy sheriff not far from his cousin’s home in tiny Hogarth, Virginia, where the local law enforcement mixes Mayberry R.F.D. with its dark underside—say, In The Heat of the Night. Ray falls into an odd investigation of an old crime, a forensic mess that brings him into contact with the tough-as-nails black beauty Kit Carson, a federal agent straight out of Elmore Leonard. While Paul’s adventure exposes him to the ambiguities of urban crime and violence, Ray’s plunges him into contact with the horrors of the Old South.
Pearson can’t resist some comic set pieces worthy of his best fiction: low humor involving backwoods infidelity, trashy drunk couples, and dopey deputies. In New York, less sure of his footing, he goofs on those old standbys: wannabe actresses, doughnut-munching cops, and assorted silent mooks. The resulting hybrid is less than his best, but still ahead of the pack.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-89269-6
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
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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