Fireworks

February 6, 2006
A modest story arc and a sure-handed execution make for a promising debut from Winthrop, even though the plot—child's death rocks marriage—is grave, familiar and thin. Writer Hollis Clayton, 40-something and far from his early literary success, is holed up on the Cape with only his hedge clippers and uncountable bottles of Jack Daniels for companions; wife Clare has taken off to the spend the summer in Maryland with her sister and assess whether she will stay in the marriage. Hollis narrates his isolation journal-style, and Winthrop gets his threadbare torpor, his calculated letters to Clare and his assorted attempts to drag himself out of denial down perfectly. His mistress, Marissa (a young aspiring writer, natch), is one-dimensional, and her final scenes verge on baffling. The son's death is told in diffuse retrospect, though the death's immediate aftermath is indelible. Scenes at the local bar and Hollis's disastrous meeting in Boston with editors are well done, but Winthrop's next outing begs for a real story.

February 15, 2006
Hollis Clayton is slowly coming apart at the seams. His wife has left him for the summer to give them both space. He is avoiding his editor because he can't seem to get anything on paper, thus endangering his chances of getting his collection of stories published by a big publisher. Even his girlfriend, Marissa, gives up on him after a Fourth of July fireworks display that results in Hollis standing drunk in the middle of the town square with errant fireworks blasting overhead. The cause of all of this turmoil? Two years ago, Hollis's four-year-old son was hit and killed by a car. He and his wife coped the best they could, but things have reached a breaking point -at least for Hollis. He drinks more, spends more time at the local bar, and obsesses over a missing girl he sees on a billboard. This debut novel by 26-year-old Winthrop is a bittersweet look at a man on the edge of despair and how he comes to grips with his new reality. The characters surrounding him are diverse and well written and provide Hollis with the ballast he needs to survive. Recommended for most public libraries." -Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2006
Winthrop's strong debut is at once a satisfactory portrait of a deeply anguished man and a reflection on how uneventful such anguish can be. Hollis Clayton is a writer who, in the few summer months we share in his slow and isolated life, endures the end of an affair, his wife's sabbatical from their marriage, his start-and-stop attempts at a daunting literary effort, and, at the root of it all, the dull pain left by the loss of his son two years before. Hollis forms relationships with his surroundings instead of with people, seeking comfort in the trimming of a hedge, a billboard of a missing girl, a lost dog, and spying on the family next door. Rather than attempt to explain the reasons for Hollis' many faults--he is drunk, negligent, and socially awkward--Winthrop handles her narrator with appropriate patience, relying on the strong voice she's created to carry us into the thick of his loneliness. Neglecting plot for character is Winthrop's point, and she makes it work through an unforgettable narrator.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)