Publisher's Weekly Review
Hattie McNair, the feisty protagonist of this modest, semi-autobiographical first novel, is a widow living in a South Carolina retirement home. Through her diary entries, we watch as the home's residents tell their life stories, exchange confidences and gossip, develop romantic crushes and turn to one another for support. Longing for a change in her daily routine, Hattie debates whether life is worth living. Her answer is a resounding ``yes.'' Together with Minna McKenzie, a retired music teacher, she plays piano duets, belting out a Scott Joplin rag. On an adventurous walk, Hattie discovers an empty, mysterious cottage completely covered with kudzu vines, tracks down its owner, a reclusive widower, and helps persuade him to rent it out. She also comforts her friend, Sarah Moorer, who is dying of cancer. Interpersed with the journal entries are letters to friends and cheery light verse (``August is a messy month/ With skeeters, flies, and fleas, / With thunderstorms and gale alarms/ And weeds up to your knees''). More a sketch than a finished work, this is an unpretentious, occasionally poignant look at aging. Illustrations. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Wilder, a resident of the Presbyterian Retirement Home in North Carolina, puts her observations of her fellow retirees to good use in this charming novel. Written as if it were the memoirs and correspondence of an elderly woman named Hattie McNair residing in the Fair Acres Retirement Home, this fiction is a neatly spun portrait of some kind and gentle elderly men and women and a few bad apples. Hattie is a busybody, though a pleasant and well-intentioned one. She manages to have the handyman tutored in literacy and secures for him a new residence for his growing family. Along the way, she describes the nut cases, the physically failing residents, and several determined souls like herself. A touching portrayal that breathes deserved life into an overlooked generation. --Denise Perry Donavin
