by Stephanie Kallos ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004
Kallos has a rare, deft way with whimsy, dream sequences and hallucinations. Comparisons to John Irving and Tennessee...
Theater veteran Kallos debuts with a dazzling mosaic of intersecting lives and fates.
Lured by an unsigned postcard, possibly from her ex-lover, freewheeling Wanda Schultz travels cross-country to Seattle. A stage manager, she’s in demand anywhere there’s a show looking for a fiercely organized, sturdy person. Her quest parallels her long lost father’s: in 1969, he left six-year-old Wanda with his sister’s large family to set off in search of his runaway wife. Elsewhere in Seattle, septuagenarian Margaret Hughes has been diagnosed with a brain “astrocytoma”—a “star” tumor. She has occupied a cavernous hilltop mansion since childhood, when her wealthy father’s hobby was dealing antiques and her mother’s was genteel insanity. By 1946, her mother was the châtelaine and “sacristan” of vast rooms of fine china and porcelain that her father fenced from Nazis, who stole from the apartments of deported Jews. Except for a brief marriage that ended after her young son was killed in a car crash, Margaret has lived in seclusion all these years, dusting tchotchkes her sole preoccupation. Determined to change her habits after the diagnosis, she advertises for a boarder. Enter Wanda. Both women, shattered by abandonment and loss, reform themselves by methodically destroying the artifacts looted from others’ lives. The smashing and cracking symbolism might be too pervasive for those who hate to see the lovable Wanda broken in service to a motif. But it’s a very skillfully integrated conceit. After Wanda recovers from multiple fractures (she’s hit by a car while running after her chimera of abandoning males), she becomes a renowned mosaic artist, creating giant installations from “pique-assiette” chards of the Hughes collection. A subplot involving bowling, the lost father, and a Holocaust survivor who has a missing piece from Margaret’s hoard rounds out this multilayered rhapsody.
Kallos has a rare, deft way with whimsy, dream sequences and hallucinations. Comparisons to John Irving and Tennessee Williams would not be amiss in this show-stopping debut.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-1779-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2012
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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