Miner does much better with her evocation of place than with her characterizations, which are shallow.
In her eighth novel, Miner (Range of Light, 1998, etc.) celebrates friendship among a group of lesbians in rural California.
Serious, reserved Emily and ebullient Salerno met in a lesbian bar in Berkeley. A perfect match, they’ve been partners for 15 years. Fifty-year-old Emily is a city planner in Chicago, the somewhat younger Salerno a jazz saxophonist. They, along with three female friends, bought a ranch in the hills of Northern California, each building separate houses (in Emily and Salerno’s case, a one-room cabin). Emily has just arrived for a vacation when she learns that Salerno, returning from a gig in Arizona, has died in a plane crash. Emily is devastated, and the novel details her grief. But her loss is transcended by the warm camaraderie of her Beulah Ranch friends. Her first thought is to sell her portion of the ranch (she gets help from her brother Michael, a real-estate lawyer in San Francisco), but her friends are aghast. They love her. She must stay. The reader knows before Emily does that she is here for keeps. The reader also knows before Emily that Eva, the young Latina forest ranger with “the rich caramel-colored skin and the hazel-almost golden-eyes,” will provide Emily with more than just friendship. As an antidote to the abundant sweetness of the group, and in lieu of a plot, Miner describes threats to their idyllic existence: a rash of fires set by an arsonist, obnoxious evangelicals pushing Creationism, loggers intent on clear-cutting. Miner also gets some mileage out of an Indian artifact Emily discovers on her land. In this righteous work, in which it’s cool to be ethnic but not a WASP (Emily resents that she’s half-WASP), she naturally donates it to the Pomo reservation.
Miner does much better with her evocation of place than with her characterizations, which are shallow.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8061-3814-9
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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