Though it sours a bit by the end, this British novel of manners and mores from the author of The Tennis Party (p. 172) charms with its easy pace and likable characters. Enthusiastic Liz Chambers convinces her docile husband Jonathan to sell their family home and purchase the local tutorial college. She hopes to turn the cozy, uninspired academy into a modern, high turn-over, high-tech prep school. Which sounds like a solid plan, if only they weren't already sinking under extensive business loans. Into their distress wanders Marcus Witherstone, an affluent estate agent who, with genuine sympathy for Liz's angered desperation, pulls some strings at the bank, arranging, among other things, for the rental of their much-mortgaged house. Explained rather blithely as just one of those things, Marcus and Liz begin an illicit affair that seems to be based not so much on passion as on mutual boredom. Ironically, their relationship is the story's least interesting element: The tense relationship Marcus has with his young, brilliant wife, and the supportive relationship of Ginny and Piers, the young couple renting Liz's house, are both more absorbing than the clichÇd adulterous affair. Marcus is far more interesting when he's scrambling to pull off a crooked real estate deal, or struggling with his wife to gain some influence over their young sons. Liz is also more interesting out of the hotel room, and more needed as teenage daughter Alice becomes obsessed with her friendship with Ginny and dashing husband Piers, who's an almost famous TV actor with troubles of his own. Though the story is overburdened with subplots, it's told in a conversational style that nicely strings all the characters together in an amiable, compelling way. The reader easily glides along until Liz begins engaging in happily-ever-after fantasies, scorning sweet Jonathan, and pushing Marcus too far. All in all, Wickham, though an observant and engaging storyteller, delivers a novel too melodramatic and lightweight to be particularly memorable.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15108-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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
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