Richly researched, gripping story of a castoff San Diego wife who shot and killed her ex-husband and his new wife one morning in 1989 while they lay asleep. Debut author Stumbo (a Los Angeles Times reporter) makes no pleas but shows that well-spoken, well-read Betty Broderick was so beaten with betrayal by her husband that her present 30-year sentence is probably unjust. Betty and Dan endured nine pregnancies that produced four children, and Betty bonded to Dan all the way, sharing his obsession with getting a legal degree for himself, on top of his medical degree, so that he could reap millions as a medical-malpractice lawyer. This took big sacrifices: Betty was not only a mother machine and superwife but she also did extra jobs to support the family while Dan got his second degree at Harvard, fraternized with future business ties, and kept himself in brilliant plumage. Stumbo follows the Brodericks through their rise from poverty to high fashion in La Jolla, and she captures Betty's disbelief when, after 16 years of marriage, Dan fell for ``teenaged office bimbo'' Linda Kolkena. Dan denied the affair for two years while setting up house with Linda and giving her a fancy office as his paralegal. When Dan moved out, Betty's whole nature changed as she became foul-mouthed, burned all of Dan's suits, drove her car through the front door of his new house, and harassed him endlessly—all of which helped Dan win a no-fault divorce and the kids. Greedy but 'borderline hysteric' Betty grew ever battier as years went by, and finally killed Dan and Linda. Her first trial ended in a hung jury, but the second convicted her—of murder in the second degree. The white male power structure that defends Dan, his divorce rulings, and his silver-tongued but hard-drinking selfishness gets a rough going over here. You do begin to see Betty's side of things. Bang bang.
Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-72666-8
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dramatic, immersive, and wanting—much like desire itself.
Based on eight years of reporting and thousands of hours of interaction, a journalist chronicles the inner worlds of three women’s erotic desires.
In her dramatic debut about “what longing in America looks like,” Taddeo, who has contributed to Esquire, Elle, and other publications, follows the sex lives of three American women. On the surface, each woman’s story could be a soap opera. There’s Maggie, a teenager engaged in a secret relationship with her high school teacher; Lina, a housewife consumed by a torrid affair with an old flame; and Sloane, a wealthy restaurateur encouraged by her husband to sleep with other people while he watches. Instead of sensationalizing, the author illuminates Maggie’s, Lina’s, and Sloane’s erotic experiences in the context of their human complexities and personal histories, revealing deeper wounds and emotional yearnings. Lina’s infidelity was driven by a decade of her husband’s romantic and sexual refusal despite marriage counseling and Lina's pleading. Sloane’s Fifty Shades of Grey–like lifestyle seems far less exotic when readers learn that she has felt pressured to perform for her husband's pleasure. Taddeo’s coverage is at its most nuanced when she chronicles Maggie’s decision to go to the authorities a few years after her traumatic tryst. Recounting the subsequent trial against Maggie’s abuser, the author honors the triumph of Maggie’s courageous vulnerability as well as the devastating ramifications of her community’s disbelief. Unfortunately, this book on “female desire” conspicuously omits any meaningful discussion of social identities beyond gender and class; only in the epilogue does Taddeo mention race and its impacts on women's experiences with sex and longing. Such oversight brings a palpable white gaze to the narrative. Compounded by the author’s occasionally lackluster prose, the book’s flaws compete with its meaningful contribution to #MeToo–era reporting.
Dramatic, immersive, and wanting—much like desire itself.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4229-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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