If you want evidence that people are thinking and writing about science fiction these days with sophistication and good sense, you need go no further than this volume. But if you want evidence that these qualities have not necessarily percolated through the science-fiction readership, you also need look no further than to see how it's edited. Assembled and very solemnly introduced by Susan Wood of the University of British Columbia, the material itself ranges from the sublime to the superfluous. The 24 selections, arranged in five not-very-convincing categories, include award-acceptance speeches, book reviews, introductions to reprints, and both substantial and slender contributions to science-fiction journals and symposiums. At their best they are eloquent examples of an unashamed humanism rarely encountered today. Fantasy and science fiction, Le Guin has long been telling us, are really about ourselves. Fantasy at its best reminds us all "that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived." Science fiction with all its incongruities is "a broken mirror" each of whose fragments "is capable of reflecting, for a moment, the left eye and nose of the reader, and also the farthest stars shining in the depths of the remotest galaxy." But the nearest Susan Wood can come in six introductions, is the observation that the writer's duty pace Le Guin is to express "a clear moral vision in the most artistically satisfying way possible." Wood's choices are often exasperating too; she gives us much more of Le Guin the priggish deplorer of commercialism and masscult than of Le Guin the daring and unsentimental romantic. The author is also rather ill-served by the repetitiveness of the selection (the imaginary "Belch the Barbarian" of one paper turns up as "Barf the Barbarian" in another). Just how much better Wood might have done can be surmised from Jeff Levin's invaluable Le Guin bibliography, reprinted here as an appendix.
Pub Date: April 24, 1979
ISBN: 0060924128
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1979
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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