The literary equivalent of comfort food in a tale of middle- aged love in Mitford, a fictional North Carolina small town: a novel that restores rather than provokes as it deftly portrays men and women caught up in the human condition. Like its popular predecessors (At Home in Mitford and A Light in the Window, not reviewed), the author's latest celebrates the lives of several Mitford citizens while offering vignettes of many more. As the story opens, 60ish Episcopalian Rector Father Tim Kavanagh has just returned from his honeymoon. A longtime bachelor, he is touchingly surprised by the joy marriage to neighbor Cynthia has brought him. Cynthia, a children's book author and illustrator, is not, however, a traditional clergyman's wife—a shocking bit of news for Tim's secretary Emma and the Episcopal Church Women. Thanks, though, to a splendid parish tea party—a tea for which Cynthia redecorates the rectory and provides delicious food—the ladies are mollified. In the year that passes, the holidays (both religious and secular) are celebrated; the community reaffirms its identity; and the deaths of the town's oldest inhabitant and of a child are balanced by the birth of twins to Tim's young housekeeper. Meanwhile, though the setting is pastoral and the people good-hearted, Mitford is as subject to change and horror as the outside world. Misogynist J.C., the editor of the local paper, amazes the townsfolk by marrying Mitford's first woman police officer; Lacey, a young girl, though badly beaten by her father, refuses to leave home because she must care for her bedridden mother; Pauline Barlowe is set on fire by the man she lives with; and Tim's faith is sorely tested and then reaffirmed. Such a small canvas framed by faith could easily be smug and anodyne, but it's not: Karon is one of those rare writers who can depict the good and the ordinary without being boring or condescending. A book to curl up with. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86934-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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