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SWEETGIRL

Name: SWEETGIRL
Author: Travis Mulhauser
ISBN: 978-0-06-240082-6

by Travis Mulhauser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2016

Maybe enjoy a Coen brothers double feature—Raising Arizona and Fargo—instead.

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A first-time novelist borrows well-worn tropes.

Percy James is 16 years old and an orphan, basically. Her mother might not be dead, but she’s not exactly around, either. Percy is, in fact, searching a meth dealer’s house for the missing Carletta when she finds a baby named Jenna and, on impulse, snatches the infant from her crib. Will the neglected teen enlist the help of a responsible social worker in finding a more salubrious environment for both herself and Jenna? Oh, heavens no. She will, instead, take the cold, filth-covered foundling to the home of her mother’s ex, a gruff-but-kindly alcoholic. Will the baby’s mother and her meth-cooking boyfriend even notice the baby is gone, and will they care? Yes and yes! Drug-addled, gun-crazy rural high jinks ensue. One expects a narrative of this sort to unfold against an Appalachian setting—or within the swampy confines of the Florida panhandle, maybe. That Mulhauser has, instead, situated the fictional Cutler County at the northernmost point of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is definitely the most original part of his novel. Percy, certainly, is an established type. She’s wise beyond her years, committed to doing the right thing despite—or is it because of?—the hardships she has endured. And, like every other character in this novel, she speaks with a folksy eloquence that requires strenuous suspension of disbelief. “While the particulars of a given calamity may be impossible to predict, while I could never say I expected to find a baby in the bedroom, chaos itself was always confirmation of the dread I carried certain in my bones.” Only a reader who is willing to believe that any teenager has ever expressed such a thought is capable of appreciating this book.

Maybe enjoy a Coen brothers double feature—Raising Arizona and Fargo—instead.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-240082-6

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.