An accomplished first novel about the American family.
Affecting, original debut about a girl’s coming of age, set against the backdrop of the NASA space-shuttle program.
Eleven-year-old Dolores Gray dreams of becoming an astronaut, an aspiration that’s a little less far-fetched for her than for the average American kid. A math prodigy and the daughter of a NASA technician, Dolores has grown up in the shadow of Cape Canaveral and its gleaming promise of space travel. Her father, Frank, takes her to all the launches; they have cozy conversations about rocket boosters; and Dolores keeps a secret diary about the lives of the astronauts. But late in the summer of 1984, her father is laid off, and everything seems to lose its center. At her middle school, Dolores befriends intense fellow whiz-kid Eric Biersdorfer, whose father is NASA’s Director of Launch Safety. Hoping he might be persuaded to rehire Frank, Mrs. Gray invites Eric’s family to dinner and then begins an affair (or so Dolores believes) with Mr. Biersdorfer. Soon thereafter, Frank is rehired, and his wife moves out. Over the ensuing months, Dolores and her younger sister Delia rarely see their mother, but they overhear muffled cries during their father’s late-night phone conversations. In the fall of 1985, Dolores starts high school (a year early), where smoking, sex and cutting class compete for her attention with the reliable launches and returns that at last make her beloved space-shuttle program seem invincible. When the Challenger explodes in January 1986, the fragile threads of hope Dolores had clung to—that her mother would return, that her father’s job was secure, that her future could be shaped by her will to fly—disintegrate along with the shuttle. Dean deftly shapes her tale, moving from the complicated social system of children and piercing details of adolescent cruelty (Dolores begins to shun Eric at school at the prodding of an alpha girl) to the secretive world of parents and the lofty aspirations of those dedicated to the mystery of outer space.
An accomplished first novel about the American family.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-7432-9722-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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