Taylor (The Presence of Things Past, 1992) returns with stories that aim for the perfect nuance and control of his first volume but that, this time around, seem hungry for content. Taylor revealed himself master of deceptively quiet stories that, in approaching stillness, burst into subtle and radiant meanings. Here, though, his control of tone is weaker; lines trying for the casual (—Charlene had the biggest tits in school—) are merely out of character in stories that depend on a perfect surface and impeccably delicate touch (—I imagine the night. The night is just outside the living-room window—). Some stories—many as short as a page, even a paragraph—return again to Des Moines, where Taylor’s narrator lived before going to Europe after college; others take up details of apartment-building life in provincial France. The former are very slight, like leftovers missing the depth of mood that’s essential for Taylor’s kind of minimalism. —The O—Connell Sisters— prove their crabby nature by keeping the balls and frisbees that land on their lawn—and while the reader waits for resonance, it never comes. Bits about early loves flirt with a more subtle density but are offset by surface-only stories like —Blacky’s Story——anecdotes about a childhood dog. Among the best are the very shortest, like —Musette Disappears——little more, but perfectly so, than a haunting memory-image from childhood. Curiously, Taylor’s potentially greater strength emerges not in this direction but in the deadpan humor of some of his French pieces. The tales about eccentric neighbors remain, again, mainly anecdotal, seldom rising beyond character sketches. But the longish closing piece, —The Driver’s License,— though it still doesn—t deepen in character or mood, offers a poker-faced telling of the byzantine anomalies and Catch-22’s of obtaining a driver’s license in the land of the very curious Gauls that will, indeed, make you laugh. In all, a holding pattern for a talented author waiting for a subject.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-885266-53-7
Page Count: 130
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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
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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