A droll piece of romantic whimsy, with an unexpected resonance.
When you love Margaret Towne, you love all the Margaret Townes.
At first, it seems this is going to be another tale of a young intellectual’s obsessive romance with a slightly younger and much crazier, if fascinating, woman—Sterile Cuckoo for a new generation—but, happily, it becomes something even stranger. “N,” a teaching assistant in philosophy at a nameless university, falls for Margaret Towne when he comes to her dorm room to find out why she has yet to attend a class. She says she feels tired, “like I haven’t slept in years and years,” and then says that N., too, looks tired—would he like to sleep there? N. wakes the next day thoroughly besotted with the mercurial Margaret, who seems to drift through life motivated by shadowy inner urges and with a whole closet full of secrets that N. spends the rest of the time trying to parse out. This fractured love story, it soon turns out, is being written as a letter by a sick and dying N. to his young daughter, so she can learn about her parents. The central question—who is it that N. actually loves?—is raised when, not long after their relationship has begun, Margaret takes N. to meet her family in, yes, Margarettown. Just how far the story departs from reality isn’t clear, though once N. meets the family, we know that something is different. There’s happy young May, surly teenager Mia, bitter and middle-aged Marge, and the self-explanatory Old Margaret, all seeming to resemble a certain love of N.’s, though at different periods in her life. Newcomer Zevin, who will publish a YA novel in the fall, takes this scenario and runs with it, though gently, never working overly hard to push her characters into emotional extremis but allowing N. and Margaret to muddle pleasantly through their baffling life, chasing after the idea of what it means to be in love with one person (do you love all of them? or just one?).
A droll piece of romantic whimsy, with an unexpected resonance.Pub Date: May 25, 2005
ISBN: 1-4013-5242-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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