Complex, compelling characters who defy pigeonholing override Goldberg’s tendency to map out the plot too neatly.
Picking up the current concerns about bullying and “mean girls,” Goldberg (Wickett's Remedy, 2005, etc.) follows a young woman tracking down a guilty memory from her childhood.
Celia, 32, works as a performance auditor in Chicago, where she lives with her boyfriend Huck, a teacher who is growing impatient with Celia’s unwillingness to commit. Then Celia is overcome by her suppressed memory of the disappearance of her best friend Djuna in fifth grade. Eleven-year-old Celia told authorities that Djuna got into a car with a stranger, but now Celia remembers that she lied; Djuna actually fell into a hole in the woods while they were arguing. Overcome with remorse, Celia returns to her childhood home in New York, to set things right. But her shyly loving parents, who still carry their own parental guilts, assure Celia that her despair at the time of Djuna’s disappearance was too real to be phony. Celia goes online to look for three other friends, Josie, Becky and Leanne, who were walking near the woods with Celia and Djuna that day. As Celia talks to each, she begins to realize that her memory may be confused. Becky saw the car pull away, and Josie saw Djuna get in it. Meanwhile other memories of her childhood come back in snippets, forcing Celia to acknowledge that her culpability may have to do with more than her friend’s death. Celia notes that the mercurial friendship of arguments and reconciliations she had with Djuna was more intimate and intense than even her relationship with Huck. And their friendship centered on their tyrannical domination over the three other girls, especially Leanne, who was poorer than the others and desperate for acceptance. It seems obvious that Djuna was the ringleader until Celia makes a final, painful visit to Djuna’s mother, still mourning the loss of her only child, an outsider herself before Celia befriended her.
Complex, compelling characters who defy pigeonholing override Goldberg’s tendency to map out the plot too neatly.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-52721-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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