Last Noel

From Barnes & Noble

Noni, a white woman, and Kaye, an African-American man, are born on Christmas Day, 1955. Just before their eighth birthday, they meet. On 12 different Christmas Days, we watch them as they reunite. Like a ballet duet, their comings and goings draw our attention and sympathy.

Publishers Weekly

Scarcely a month after J.F.K.'s assassination, two seven-year-old children-a spoiled, white North Carolina girl born on Christmas Eve and a poor, street-smart Philadelphia black boy born hours later on Christmas Day-take a sleigh ride early Christmas morning and begin a lifelong friendship. After an intriguing opening, this earnest fable about social change from veteran novelist Divided into 12 unevenly spaced vignettes-each set during the Christmas season-the plot traces the star-crossed friendship of Noni Tilden, daughter of her town's richest family, and Kaye King, grandson of Noni's mother's maid, across a span of four decades. The familiar characters verge on stereotypes: Noni's father, Bud, is a hard-drinking former basketball jock; her mother a snobby socialite; her brother, Wade, a bigoted, scheming land developer. Aunt Ma, Kaye's grandmother, is a kind but tough woman who "knows to keep her place in a white man's world." Malone (First Lady) also has a corny way of introducing bits of race-related history and period details into the narrative ("Judy's doing it. It's called aerobics," says one cocktail party guest to another). The story does pick up some momentum about two-thirds of the way through, and readers who stay the course will be rewarded with a sentimental, fitfully affecting drama of sibling feuds and divorces, loss and reconciliation. (Nov.) Forecast: Sourcebooks Landmark is counting on Malone's crowd-pleasing abilities to make this a big Christmas book-a 100,000 first printing is planned. The price is definitely right, and a strong marketing campaign and seven-city author tour should help, though the book will face stiff competition from other Christmas releases and classics. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Malone moves from short stories (Red Clay, Blue Cadillac) and police procedurals (First Lady) to create a novel of enduring friendship. Daughter to the wealthy Tildens of Moors, NC, Noni is born on Christmas Eve 1956. Hours later, on Christmas Day, Kaye arrives as a new grandson to the King family, longtime black servants to the white Tildens. Noni and Kaye meet on Christmas Day in 1963 as seven-year-olds and forge a bond that survives every effort to separate them. The novel is arranged in 12 chapters, covering Christmases over 40 years. Through the prism of Kaye and Noni and their extended families and friends, the author sheds light on American culture and especially its range of relationships. Though expertly imagined, this book will mostly appeal to the lucrative women's market, especially with its tearjerker ending. And while definitely Southern in setting and characters, it doesn't have the authenticity of recent works from other North Carolinians, such as Pamela Duncan's Moon Women and Robert Morgan's This Rock. For public libraries with ample fiction budgets or where Malone has a following.-Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

The Washington Post

Malone uses minutely observed encounters, textured with memories, to explore the nature of friendship, family and inexplicable affection. His art transforms set pieces of melodrama into poignant human drama.

Kirkus Reviews

The latest southern saga from Malone (Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, 2002, etc.) reaches across 40 years in the lives of two childhood friends who see each other mainly at Christmas. Noelle ("Noni") Tilden was born on Christmas Day 1956. So was John ("Kaye") King. In their hometown of Moors, North Carolina, everybody knows just about everybody else, so it's inevitable that the two are going to meet-and they do, on Christmas Eve 1963. Noni's family are prominent local citizens (her grandfather founded the town bank), while Kaye's folks are poor blacks (his grandmother keeps house for the Tildens). But Noni and Kaye become friends and grow up together during the turbulent 1960s and '70s. The story is broken into 12 chapters, each set on or near a Christmas Day, and it follows the fates of the Tildens and Kings with the clarity of a family album. Kaye's mother goes mad and leaves him to the care of his grandparents; he becomes radicalized by the black power movements of the Nixon years before making peace with the world and going on to medical school and a successful practice. Noni loses her beloved elder brother Gordon in Vietnam, marries local boy Roland Hurd, and settles down to raise a family. Most of the developments are realistically gradual and unsurprising (Noni's hell-raising brother Wade gets himself into trouble again and again as a boy and grows up to run a string of unprofitable businesses; Kaye's wheelchair-bound grandfather loses all ambition and spends his last decades dozing in the sun), but there are also moments of more intense drama, as when Noni develops a cancerous tumor and Kaye is called in to save her. But even that intensity seems to arise out of patterns and traditionsset long before. A quietly moving tale of people formed and trapped by history and locale, told with an authentic taste for the region. First printing of 100,000; author tour