Melodramatic romance that rewards readers in for the long haul.
In this debut novel, a Texas woman reminisces about her past loves.
In 2003, an old friend drops by while Cherie, the owner of an antiques shop in Galveston, Texas, waits for a delivery. Loud, outspoken Delilah knows some of Cherie’s secrets, including that Cherie once worked as a waitress/dancer at the Jewel Box, a topless club in Houston. When the mahogany bar from the Jewel Box finally arrives at the shop, it triggers an extended flashback that consumes the bulk of the narrative. In 1968, desperate to earn money to care for her toddler, newly divorced Cherie agrees to join her friend Kat at the Jewel Box. A small-town girl, Cherie is so petrified of this new venture that she vomits in the car on the way. She adjusts, though, and befriends the bar’s manager, Beau, who offers her sensible, fatherly advice and book recommendations. At the club, Cherie also meets Gabe, an unhappily married carpenter and her polar opposite. He’s quiet; she’s chatty. He’s rude; she strives to be ladylike. After their first kiss, she falls for him. During the next 30 years, the two experience an intense on-again, off-again relationship. In attempts to move on, both intermittently become involved with other people over the years. Liberal use of references to current events and pop culture keeps the book firmly tethered to the time period, and most secondary characters, particularly Cherie’s daughter and Gabe’s mother, feel fully developed. Yet, although scenes at the club are usually vivid, later pages feel superficial and rushed in an attempt to cover 30 years in 300 pages. Especially in the early pages, the dialogue-heavy narrative sometimes relies on artificial-sounding conversations to move the plot or impart descriptions—“You’re five foot three and I’m five seven”—though later pages contain some delightful gems: “I loved doing his laundry and folded his socks and underwear as though they were the shroud of Turin.” The story contains some crude language but, given its early topless-club setting, surprisingly few extended sex scenes. Nonetheless, the neatly done happily-ever-after ending should satisfy romance readers.
Melodramatic romance that rewards readers in for the long haul.Pub Date: March 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481107150
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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