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SHEDDING and LITERALLY DREAMING

Name: SHEDDING and LITERALLY DREAMING
Author: Verena Stefan
ISBN: 1-55861-081-2

by Verena Stefan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 30, 1994

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It's easy to see why Stefan became a German feminist icon after the 1975 publication of the novella ``Shedding,'' and equally easy to see why her influence has waned with stories like those collected under the title ``Literally Dreaming.'' ``Shedding'' paints an intimate portrait of a woman learning to exist without men. That idea must have seemed shocking at its inception, and even today the fluid prose exerts a strong pull through its laid-back, unnamed, first-person narrator. She outlines her sex life, beginning with a painful ``first time,'' but is primarily concerned with what women do and how they act when they no longer need to serve as emotional intermediaries for men. Eventually, a loving, almost maternal bond develops between the narrator and a woman named Fenna, who grope desperately for language to express what is happening between them. Not a single word of this tale of one woman's consciousness being raised sounds dated almost 20 years later. The short stories, however, are pale, ineffective repetitions of that powerful exploration of nascent feminism. They inhabit the world that the narrator of ``Shedding'' aims for—women living together out in the country without men—but lack the natural structure and tension provided by the novella narrator's sexual evolution. In an interesting essay appended here, ``Euphoria and Cacophony,'' Stefan recalls that ``Literally Dreaming'' was unpopular in Germany because ``nothing sensational happens; there's no action, no sex scenes, no struggle against men''—however, the interchangeable stories' endless nature scenes and incomplete sentences may also have had something to do with the negative reaction. With the exception of Stefan's essay, which is cluttered with lines like ``But I'm anticipating myself,'' the translations are solid but overly cautious. An afterword by Levin provides useful background on international feminist literature and Stefan's place in its spectrum. Experimental writing with a 50% success rate.

Pub Date: Dec. 30, 1994

ISBN: 1-55861-081-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Feminist Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994

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.