Facile, silly and insulting to both sexes. Will probably be a big hit.
Two Manhattan women decide the urban men in their lives need retooling in order to be worthwhile spouses—or at least first dates: a chick-lit debut by the founding editor of Zoetrope.
Lucy is a Columbia biology professor with a wimpy boyfriend, Adam. Still in the throws of his econ dissertation and practically living off Lucy, Adam also proves himself pathetically inept on a Valentine’s Day camping trip. Lucy’s best friend, Martha, is a struggling actress. Out of frustration with her own first dates, Martha has just begun a business called FirstDate, through which she offers her critiquing service to improve men’s dating skills. The women, who live in the same building, spend a lot of time together in a bar dishing men, in particular New York City men in all their (white, middle-class) varieties: metro-sexual preeners, overly sensitive neurotics, techno-gadget addicts, self-important tycoons. In contrast, Lucy’s best college buddy, Cooper, a dairy farmer from West Virginia, is both manly and a gentleman. Why Lucy and he never got romantic remains vague, but when he visits New York, she watches with some jealousy as sparks fly between him and Martha. Nevertheless, the three of them hatch a plan to start a camp to train men how to be men. Next thing you know, Martha’s rounded up some of her clients and her sweetly neurotic brother—while Lucy’s tricked Adam into thinking he’s attending as a counselor—and they’re all off to West Virginny, where the men are soon having a great time changing tires and shooting guns. Martha is having less fun because Cooper’s mother is a steel magnolia doing her damnedest to thwart Martha’s romance with her son, while Cooper himself is distracted. Cooper’s secret soon comes out—and, suddenly, urban skills start coming in handy. Even poor Adam gets to shine.
Facile, silly and insulting to both sexes. Will probably be a big hit.Pub Date: July 19, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6214-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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