A palatable collection that has some trouble finding its way home.
A trio of self-styled novellas brimming with potential.
Nero’s (Visiting Vincent Van Gogh, 2010, etc.) sparse cast is made up of lost individuals orbiting the fringes and seeking some form of autonomy, real or imagined. “Whatever you are,” suggests one character, “like me, you are an outsider. Outside of your order, outside of society, outside of wherever and whatever it is that you came from.” In The Nun and the Partisan, Sister Vinessa uses a book of mnemonics to create a “mental palace” that offers respite from the monotony of Italian convent life. Her seemingly harmless daydreams take a cerebral turn when she encounters a rebel soldier on the convent grounds and imprisons him in her mind. A dusty campfire tale, Runners in the Night centers on a council of vagabonds debating the existence of the elusive, Atlantis-like city of Barston. When a drifter named Virgil happens upon their camp, claiming to have spent years in that paradise only to be cast out forever, they implore him to share his story. His recollection is filled with enough raw longing to send readers scanning a globe for Barston’s mythical coordinates. Though Vito’s Big Score is the longest story, offering the most in the way of plot, it’s also the weakest of the three. Drawing on the author’s own career as an artist, it chronicles the rise of disgruntled Vito, a painter whose brilliant oeuvre is ignored by the galleries because he doesn’t fit the attractive artist’s profile. He finds a solution in his zealous younger neighbor, Guido, who christens himself Mimo di Modi and passes off Vito’s paintings as his own. As Guido’s fame ignites, Vito finds himself resenting the boy’s self-aggrandizing behavior. Its frenetic dialogue and partially realized characters leave it feeling more like a draft than the former two stories. The novellas excel in their spare, reflective qualities that can feel fablelike, though they read more like a series of sketches than a complete body of work.
A palatable collection that has some trouble finding its way home.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-1453767481
Page Count: 110
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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