A luminescent and evocative tale of grief, free of the standard clichés.
A young woman’s sudden identity crisis propels her to the isolated reaches of Lapland in Vida’s powerful second novel.
Clarissa, a New Yorker in her late 20s, is hit by a pair of emotional shocks within the space of a week: Her father has died of a heart attack, and while rummaging through his possessions, she discovers that he was not her biological father. There’s nobody close to comfort her in the midst of this crisis. She’s deeply wounded that her fiancé, Pankaj, knew and never told her, and her mother has been missing and presumed dead for years. There is nothing for Clarissa to do except fly to Helsinki, get to Lapland—a 21-hour trek by bus and train—and find Eero, the man her birth certificate says is her father. Lapland’s austerity and distance from New York is a small comfort, but Clarissa’s interactions with the locals reveal that her personal history is even more complicated than she had thought. That learning process unlocks a host of bad memories—being raped as a teenager, looking for her mother in Texas and later holding a funeral for her. This kind of material often gets shaped into a fish-out-of-water tale that closes with comforting reconciliations. But Vida (And Now You Can Go, 2003) is having none of that: This is a sharp, sometimes brutal, portrait of a woman who feels her persona has been wiped away and wants to start over, not heal. Her careful, unadorned prose neatly reveals Clarissa’s mix of damage and resolve, echoing Raymond Carver’s minimalism while retaining the warmth that so many Carver imitators lack. And Vida’s evocative descriptions of life in Lapland—the reindeer herds, the slow pace of the locals, a hotel made of snow and ice—underscore the themes of isolation and otherworldliness but never overwhelm the core story of Clarissa’s despair.
A luminescent and evocative tale of grief, free of the standard clichés.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-082837-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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