Realistically gritty and morally astute, these tales can also feel overly instructional.
A wide-ranging volume offers a collection of short stories and a novella.
Coles (Sister Carrie, 2016, etc.) seems drawn to epiphanies begotten from moral crisis, a theme that permeates this assemblage of 33 tales and a novella, well under 100 pages. In the first story, “The Gift,” a 17-year-old girl, Catherine, becomes pregnant and is sent by her furious mother to a convent in France to deliver the child and then give it up for adoption. The baby is born without feet, but Catherine loves her deeply anyway, teaching her the difference between a disability and a blessing. In “The Necklace,” an unmarried couple struggles to figure out their future while they travel in India, but when they see tragedy befall another pair, they fully realize the depth of their love for each other. Some of the stories are so short they’re impressionistic and pull the reader into what seems like a dramatic narrative already in progress. For example, “The Bear” is two pages and details the outpouring of gratitude a man feels for life after he narrowly escapes death. Many of the tales confront a conundrum, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions. In “Dilemma,” a surgeon’s son shoots himself in an attempted suicide, and the physician has to decide if it’s either cruel or loving to try to save him, given the irreparable damage he has done to himself. The book concludes with a novella that dramatizes the love a teenage girl has for an Iranian boy possibly mixed up in terrorist activity. Cole’s compilation is as artistically ambitious as it is eclectic—one of the stories is set in France during its Revolutionary era. In addition, the author’s moral explorations are courageously unflinching and don’t shy away from either controversial or macabre subject matter. But these ethical studies can cross a line into sermonizing and read like overly didactic parables meant to impart heavy-handed lessons. Furthermore, the prose can be underwhelming: “Despite our lack-of-a-forever-marriage commitment, Helen and I were intimate good buddies, and we leveled our friendship canoe pretty well by stroking carefully in unison on opposite sides.”
Realistically gritty and morally astute, these tales can also feel overly instructional.Pub Date: June 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9976729-3-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Story in Literary Fiction
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2017
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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