Culture Watch
ADDLED
By JoeAnn Hart, ©2007
Published by Little, Brown & Co.
Hardcover: 324 pp
Addled is a very funny, insightful, and well-developed first novel by Massachusetts writer JoeAnn Hart. If you’re looking for a beach read that will make you laugh at the same time you’re shaking your head in recognition, here it is.
The action takes place during a summer somewhere in New England, at the Eden Rock Country Club. Things are running smoothly, with the usual tennis/golf games and poolside gossiping, when, on the fourth of July, a flock of Canada geese decides to take up residency. They are particularly fond of the golf course, with its manicured grass and little lake, and in short order the birds bring on a series of crises for the club members and the management. To wit:
- The club’s earnest and efficient young manager, Gerard Wilton, makes a few unfortunate choices in his efforts to get rid of the geese, thereby endangering his job.
- Charles Lambert, a club member who is successful bond trader, hits a golf ball that kills a goose. This unfortunate slaying brings on a mid-life crisis of enormous proportions.
- Vita, the club’s gourmet chef, is a 1 st generation American, offspring of Columbian immigrant parents who were so determined to rear her according to their perceptions of success in their new country that they spoke only English in the home. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, and her decision to become a chef was a great disappointment to her mother. Vita has her own methods of solving the geese problem.
- Phoebe, Charles’ daughter, is an animal rights activist whose determined efforts on behalf of the geese only complicate matters.
- And then there’s Madeline, wife of Charles. She is the chosen acolyte to the club’s grande dame, Arietta Wingate. Mrs. Wingate keeps a bloodline book that makes the Social Register look like the funny pages.
In writing social satire, it’s not easy to create fully-realized characters that don’t veer into caricature. Ms. Hart’s principals are truly likeable even as we find ourselves laughing at them. With Addled, Ms. Hart has given us a delightful romp, and we can only look forward to her future efforts.
— JS
RELATIVE DANGER
by June Shaw, © 2006
Published by Thomson Gale
Hardcover; 303 pp
If you’re looking for a lively tale involving a grandmother who still has all her faculties including her sex drive, this is the book for you. June Shaw has created a most engaging character in Cealie Gunther, widow, business woman, and grandmother to Kat, a young woman who should be about to graduate from high school. Alas, a murder at that school has shaken Kat so severely that she is considering dropping out just days before her final exams.
The writing in this mystery seems uneven, with much of the middle of the book a bit of a slump, brought on by Cealie’s persistent mental dithering over what to do or whether to do it, accompanied by lots of driving back and forth, hither and yon.
When Shaw is giving us the inside view of the high school and its faculty, administrators, and students, however, her touch is sure, and the action much more exciting. It is refreshing to find characters of dimension here, and although a couple of them border on stereotype, they are by and large believable. Shaw has the inner workings of our educational system down pat, with one exception.
That exception involves her claims that Kat, a senior about to graduate, “could probably be salutatorian of her class if she tried. And she might get offered a nice scholarship to a major university.” In this day and age, it is highly unlikely that a senior could reach the top of her class at the last minute simply by trying. When Kat decides to take her exams, it is the record of her past four years that brings her an honor. Also, acceptances to major universities are usually finalized in late April or early May. It’s a rare senior who is still at sea right before final exams.
Cealie’s love interest is — well, interesting. Her former lover, Gil Thurman, pops up in this book because he is opening another branch of his successful “Cajun Delights” restaurant chain in Kat’s town. Cealie, a widow who seems unable to get past the sense of betrayal she felt when her husband died and left her alone, is determined to live a life independent of a man. One supposes that her on/off relationship with Gil will continue if Ms. Hart gives us a sequel to Relative Danger.
A bonus at the end of the book is a chapter entitled “Cajun Delights,” with a couple of recipes and a short treatise on the growing of cacti, both subjects prominently featured in the book.
— JS
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