Scan barcode
catherinepbartnikgmailcom's review
4.0
Aww, poor sad coverless book. The author actually graduated from my college and came to speak to us a few years back. Sweet woman - interesting book with a few Brooklyn/Saint Joseph's details that were fun to seek out.
expendablemudge's review
3.0
Here we have a first novel published in 1979. I am left to guess that it didn't set the sales charts afire by the fact that it's all but disappeared from Ms. Bonanno's CV ( see her website and be persistent!), but that sure hasn't stopped Ms. Bonanno from being a very successful writer (back to the CV, helluva career).
Many first novels feature a protagonist that is the author in a fright wig, so to speak. I suspect that this novel features a supporting character that's the author in a fright wig, the character of Vicki, the judgmental friend of a young mother getting a divorce. The fact that Vicki gets the space and sympathy she does, when she's not central to the plot, makes me suspect this...I ccould be wrong, of course.
The novel itself is about Sarah, the distinguished and successful professor at a small Catholic school, whose devastating stroke leaves her changed forever, and in need of round-the-clock help. Joan, a young college-educated divorcing mother, needs a job to support herself and her son. Pietro, a priest and Sarah's teaching colleague, is utterly in love with Sarah and, we suspect, she with him...but Sarah never encourages him to break his vows as she did by leaving a nunnery to marry a famous sculptor so long ago.
These three people, quite convincingly drawn, are in orbit around each other held by the metaphysical gravity of love...and by the different force that is lovingkindness. Each character has strong bonds of affection to Sarah and to each other, but each is also acting out of the need to express a sort of agape for the others, that disinterested spirit of goodwill that is such a Catholic staple in Good Works.
But Bonanno's long career in fiction can be explained in one short sentence about this, her first novel: She makes you believe that goodness, lovingkindness, is real.
I believe Sarah helps Joan, who helps her, and Pietro helps them both, for the mixed and very human motives that power each of us in our actions. But the impressive skill of a first-time novelist in delineating characters who can believably act selflessly should not go unremarked.
This is a period piece in many ways. I recommend it to aficionados of character-driven stories, to people over 45, and to Catholics who would like to remember what it was like to read something about a *good* priest.
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: "My name is David Brandstetter. I'm a claims investigator for the Medallion Life Insurance Company." He handed her a card. She didn't glance at it. "I'm looking for Peter Oats," he said.
"He's not here. I wish he were. Maybe you can help me. The police don't seem to care."
She was April Stannard. Her lover, Peter's father, had died. April believed he'd been murdered.
Dave Brandstetter's investigation takes him through the rare-book world, to backstage at a community theatre, to the home of a world-famous television performer. Along the way, Dave soon comes to agree with April.
My Review: Small-town California has a lot of atmosphere, according to Hansen; I don't remember it that way, but I was young and miserable, so I'll go with the man who found there something that led to this description of an old mill made into a theater:
Beautiful.
It's with this book, second in the series, that Hansen's chops come fully into play. He's here to wow you, and he's got the story to keep you sitting right there flipping pages. April, the bereaved, is Rita Hayworth in my mind; Oates, the dead guy, looks like John Garfield; Peter, the son and heir, is Cabaret-era Michael York; and so on and so on. (Eve, Oates' ex-wife, is Barbara Stanwyck.) I do this a lot, cast the perfect movie cast as I read along. But this time it felt as if it was all done for me. Oates' murderer, when revealed, was a surprise to me even though this was a re-read. And the actor I'd put in the role was perfect...no testament to my skills, just an example of how beautifully Hansen draws his characters.
Dave's got a man, too...how amazing for the 1970s! I so wish this had been a TV series. Magnum PI only gay! *sigh* What might have been....
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Many first novels feature a protagonist that is the author in a fright wig, so to speak. I suspect that this novel features a supporting character that's the author in a fright wig, the character of Vicki, the judgmental friend of a young mother getting a divorce. The fact that Vicki gets the space and sympathy she does, when she's not central to the plot, makes me suspect this...I ccould be wrong, of course.
The novel itself is about Sarah, the distinguished and successful professor at a small Catholic school, whose devastating stroke leaves her changed forever, and in need of round-the-clock help. Joan, a young college-educated divorcing mother, needs a job to support herself and her son. Pietro, a priest and Sarah's teaching colleague, is utterly in love with Sarah and, we suspect, she with him...but Sarah never encourages him to break his vows as she did by leaving a nunnery to marry a famous sculptor so long ago.
These three people, quite convincingly drawn, are in orbit around each other held by the metaphysical gravity of love...and by the different force that is lovingkindness. Each character has strong bonds of affection to Sarah and to each other, but each is also acting out of the need to express a sort of agape for the others, that disinterested spirit of goodwill that is such a Catholic staple in Good Works.
But Bonanno's long career in fiction can be explained in one short sentence about this, her first novel: She makes you believe that goodness, lovingkindness, is real.
I believe Sarah helps Joan, who helps her, and Pietro helps them both, for the mixed and very human motives that power each of us in our actions. But the impressive skill of a first-time novelist in delineating characters who can believably act selflessly should not go unremarked.
This is a period piece in many ways. I recommend it to aficionados of character-driven stories, to people over 45, and to Catholics who would like to remember what it was like to read something about a *good* priest.
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: "My name is David Brandstetter. I'm a claims investigator for the Medallion Life Insurance Company." He handed her a card. She didn't glance at it. "I'm looking for Peter Oats," he said.
"He's not here. I wish he were. Maybe you can help me. The police don't seem to care."
She was April Stannard. Her lover, Peter's father, had died. April believed he'd been murdered.
Dave Brandstetter's investigation takes him through the rare-book world, to backstage at a community theatre, to the home of a world-famous television performer. Along the way, Dave soon comes to agree with April.
My Review: Small-town California has a lot of atmosphere, according to Hansen; I don't remember it that way, but I was young and miserable, so I'll go with the man who found there something that led to this description of an old mill made into a theater:
The waterwheel was twice a man’s height, wider than a man’s two stretched arms. The timbers, braced and bolted with rusty iron were heavy, hand-hewn, swollen with a century of wet. Moss bearded the paddles, which dripped as they rose. The sounds were good. Wooden stutter like children running down a hall at the end of school. Grudging axle thud like the heartbeat of a strong old man.
Beautiful.
It's with this book, second in the series, that Hansen's chops come fully into play. He's here to wow you, and he's got the story to keep you sitting right there flipping pages. April, the bereaved, is Rita Hayworth in my mind; Oates, the dead guy, looks like John Garfield; Peter, the son and heir, is Cabaret-era Michael York; and so on and so on. (Eve, Oates' ex-wife, is Barbara Stanwyck.) I do this a lot, cast the perfect movie cast as I read along. But this time it felt as if it was all done for me. Oates' murderer, when revealed, was a surprise to me even though this was a re-read. And the actor I'd put in the role was perfect...no testament to my skills, just an example of how beautifully Hansen draws his characters.
Dave's got a man, too...how amazing for the 1970s! I so wish this had been a TV series. Magnum PI only gay! *sigh* What might have been....
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
More...