Carefully composed, heartbreakingly poignant, and memorable.
Raebeck’s coming-of-age novel follows a teenage boy through family tragedy and social conflict in 1980s Long Island.
“My mother died in May 1982, the end of my sophomore year in high school…” Ricky Hawkins tells us in the opening lines of this melancholy novel. Her death is the catalyst for the gradual dissolution of an already fragile family. Ricky’s father, Harold, moves the family back to their summer house in Amagansett, a narrow strip of land between bay and ocean on Long Island’s East End. It was their original home, where Ricky and his older sister, Lonnie, and younger sister, Tessy, were raised until his father’s job took the family up-island. Too quickly, Harold brings a new woman into the siblings’ lives. Lonnie rebels and runs off to Florida with her boyfriend, the fretful and anxious Tessy turns inward, and Ricky finds escape on the pickup basketball court behind the Amagansett grade school. This is where Ricky, who is White, becomes friends with Lance Williams, the Black star of the East Hampton high school basketball team. It is a relationship that will bring him into the middle of the tensions between the local Whites and Blacks. The narrative ambles at a gentle pace, leading to a moment of searing high drama. The author captures the particulars of time and place through evocative prose and succinct dialogue that reveals much in few words (“One of the first warm days, the sky a mild blue with huge puffs of cloud, I found Tessy leaning on one hand, pulling weeds with the other, one knee poking her white dress into a small tent”). As Ricky rides his bike from hamlet to hamlet, the author treats readers to beautifully expansive vistas that will change dramatically in the coming years (Amagansett still has its potato fields, and the large, elite chain stores have not yet invaded East Hampton’s Main Street). Through Ricky’s friendship with a group of local fishermen, the reader bears witness to the imminent demise of that industry and to the desperation and resignation among those who called the East End home.
Carefully composed, heartbreakingly poignant, and memorable.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781662936821
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
