Very appealing, but more mature insights don’t entirely compensate for the fact that both heroine and storyline greatly...
Another engaging, ruefully funny saga of a young woman growing up without ever quite fitting in, from the author of The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (1999).
Sophie Applebaum introduces herself to us en route from her home in suburban Philadelphia to a cousin’s bat mitzvah. At 12, she's already witty, mildly insecure and determined in her aimless way not to do anything she doesn’t want to. These character traits will be familiar to Bank’s previous readers, and the author again favors the interlinked-stories format as she drops in on Sophie at various life-defining moments. “Boss of the World” sketches out the family dynamic: quiet, much-loved father; anxious, hectoring mother; unreliable but charming big brother Jack; follow-the-rules little brother Robert, and Sophie in the middle, vaguely discomfited by them all. In subsequent stories/chapters, she drifts through a mediocre college, makes something of an effort to land a job in publishing (actually learning to type), negotiates complex friendships with women usually more assured than she, and meets any number of Mr. Wrongs, who range from self-absorbed to philandering to nice-enough-but-not-The-One. (That constitutes progress for Sophie.) Robert marries aggressively orthodox Naomi; Jack flits from woman to woman before settling down with a well-connected real estate agent—“he would work to be part of Mindy's family as he’d never worked to be part of our family,” his sister comments sardonically. After her father’s death, Sophie grows more tender toward her mother, acknowledging their shared vulnerability. She even learns to love her maternal grandmother, once critical and difficult but considerably softened by a stroke and an impending date with the Grim Reaper. Though the Applebaums all get off plenty of good wisecracks, the overall tone here is faintly melancholy. The last snapshot is of a 40ish Sophie, who has a new job and a decade-younger boyfriend, but isn't exactly dancing in the aisles.
Very appealing, but more mature insights don’t entirely compensate for the fact that both heroine and storyline greatly resemble their predecessors in Bank’s bestselling debut.Pub Date: June 7, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03411-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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