A careful, well-made chronicle of a man's attempt to dredge up childhood abuse and of his later confrontation with his father. Aitken's second (Terre Haute, 1989)—though sometimes too programmatic—builds to a moving finale that refuses to simplify events. Daniel Kenning, well-married to Leslie, is an award-winning architect. But when the death of an acquaintance oddly touches him, he begins to understand—also thanks to the help of a female therapist—how much of his life has been repressed. Emotionally withdrawn from his own family, and assuming that's the way things must be, Daniel remembers (with therapeutic aid) his own adolescent homosexuality, savage beatings from his father, and, finally, sexual abuse. At times this is all laid out too neatly—Daniel on the couch deftly being led by the miraculous therapist to the secret of the family romance—but Aitken, once he gets all the background into the story, picks up the narrative nicely when Daniel goes home, Ö la Roseanne Barr and many others, to ``break the silence.'' Aitken dazzles the rest of the way, carefully sidestepping easy melodrama. Daniel's father, a retired cosmetic surgeon, and his mother are both unwilling to admit the truth of the past, and Daniel's mother sends her son away after the inevitable confrontation. Back home, Leslie suggests a separation, and Daniel goes to Japan for a bout of landscape architecture, where he has a kind of epiphany and a tender nonsexual night with a young man before returning home when his father is taken ill. By the close, only Daniel's own family life is resolved—he is now able to love his wife and boys without holding back. Occasionally too much is telegraphed too soon, but Aitken's novel, articulate and impressive, handles a controversial issue engagingly while mostly staying away from therapeutic jargon or easy answers.
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-74707-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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
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
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