Customer Reviews

Mothers and Daughters

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I read this book when it was published and I loved it. In moving, mother tossed the book and it took me a long time to find it in paperback. Re-read it 2 years ago and loved it all over again. Am a big Evan Hunter fan.

He goes for the Lit major market in this book, a story that tackles a topic that today's conventional wisdom says men don't know jack squat about. Women. Four of them, plus the men in their lives. College roomates Amanda and Gillian, a study in opposites. Amanda is beautiful and feminine but a bit prissy, but this hides a deeply sensual nature. Gillian is earthy and sexy, but more naiive than she'll admit. Julia is a community "pillar" of this college town who refuses to bow to age. Kate is Amanda's niece, raised as a daughter. Maybe this is why this woman-child is mature beyond her years. Matthew, a Rhett Butler-style Southern Lothario whose heart, like Rhett's, is tamed by a "conquest". And David, Julia's son--just out of the stockade after an incident while in the Navy, he's brilliant and understandably troubled. He follows up his military failure with a successful civilian career--except when it comes to finding Miss Right.

This is the story of college buddies and what happens to them over the years. I haven't seen a copy in over 30 years, but I remember Matthew and Amanda and Gillian and David like it was yesterday. Hunter's usual silky smooth prose without the porno element that permeates his work today. Hollywood and actresses and family life and college years and Van Heflin's horse (you gotta read it to "get" it).