Israeli author Kenaz, published in English for the first time here, probes the perimeter and then the anguished center of helpless old age, to find within bitterness and fear, heroism and a kind of nobility. Unlovely, griping Mrs. Yolanda Moscowitz, a former French teacher, is recovering from a broken leg in a nursing institution. ``A big heavy woman, her face very raddled...with narrow slits of eyes pristine blue, clear and bright, like scraps of a lost distant sky.'' She takes great pains with her hair however, as if it ``had some magic power to protect her.'' Yolanda has no family; husband and kin have drained her life of freedom and promise. Yolanda is suspicious and puzzled by the friendly overtures of the painter Lazar, a fellow patient. ``Here is Inferno,'' declares Lazar, ``So what remains? A little solidarity, a little love, maybe?'' Lazar draws Yolanda's portraits; she is horrified by what he sees as ``ruins surviving a disaster.'' Throughout, dramas take place in the ward: a pale wraith of a pale life dies of a wasting disease; families warehouse their old and sick; nurses shield themselves, with anger or cold efficiency, from cries and demands that they cannot satisfy. Yolanda, given to heavy makeup and grotesque solo parades, fearing at one point that she has been invaded by ``someone else,'' begins to awaken, to see clearly ``the tragic inhuman beauty of the place.'' But at home in her small apartment again, she knows ``the world around her is emptying out.'' Then a mentally ill neighbor, who loves to see the cats in the courtyard, plunges to her death from her balcony. Yolanda and Lazar will have a final phoned dialogue of love, grief, and a poignant new self- knowledge, and Yolanda, above the courtyard, contemplates the glittering but unredeeming stars. This affecting entry from a new publisher (with send-off blurbs by Philip Roth and Amoz Oz.) plumbs with fevered intensity the ``bewilderment and frustration'' of old age's airless confinement.
Pub Date: March 23, 1994
ISBN: 1-883642-20-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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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