Sentimentality and a lack of original material prevent this novel from coming to life.
A pair of best friends yearns for love and a larger life.
Two young women: one blonde, one brunette; one conventional, one rebellious. Both Jewish; both employed in the Catskills for the summer tourist season. Both 19. Rosenthal’s (Take the D Train, 2012) new novel is set in 1940 and concerns a pair of Bronx-raised best friends. Frima spends the summer working at her mother’s resort; Bess works at another hotel not far away. Frima falls in love with Bess’ handsome brother, Jack, also employed by her mother that summer. Bess strays a bit afield: She catches the eye of Vinny, an Italian labor organizer. Her brother disapproves, but by the end of the summer, Bess has made some radical plans—to move away from home and, even more shocking, move in with Vinny. In alternating chapters, the novel tells the story from both girls’ points of view. That structure doesn’t quite work: It feels a little too on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other, especially since the characters are set up to be opposites. Worse is the air of sentimentality that pervades the book, overwhelming brief attempts at humor. Rosenthal’s prose is adequate and her subject matter not uninteresting, but the story feels utterly conventional. This terrain is already well-traversed. Her characters never come fully to life as themselves—only as two-dimensional foils for each other. The dialogue doesn’t convince; nor do the characters’ various motivations. We’re told that Bess, for example, longs to leave home because her parents make her miserable. But we’re never shown why or how they do so. Unconvincing in these smaller details, the novel remains unconvincing as a whole.
Sentimentality and a lack of original material prevent this novel from coming to life.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-439-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Run-of-the-mill psychological thriller tarted up with psychobabble.
Is the governor of Louisiana planning to kill his daughter because he knows that she knows he killed her mother to further his political and romantic interests—or is the daughter simply paranoid?
Thirty-five-year-old Grayson Guillory finds an unmarked video in a hollowed-out copy of a Huey Long biography. Even before she watches it, she suspects the worst, and she’s right: the tape shows Grayson’s mother, shortly before her supposed suicide 11 months before, claiming that her husband, whose political ambitions range beyond the governor’s mansion, was plotting with others to kill her. Still deeply depressed about her mother’s death, Grayson begins to suspect every word and deed of her beloved father—who waited only two months to marry his dead wife’s sister. She also suspects his cronies, including her own fiancé Carter, her father’s closest political aide. Using italics to suggest the divisions growing inside Grayson as she second-guesses her own and everyone else’s motivations, Dewberry (a.k.a. Elizabeth Dewberry Vaughn: Break the Heart of Me, 1994, etc.) effectively depicts her narrator’s increasing paranoia as it races alongside her increasingly reasonable dread. But Grayson is so spoiled and self-centered that readers will find it difficult to care much about her predicament, particularly since the narrow world she and the governor’s entourage inhabit is peopled by others even less likable or believable. Grayson’s mother is the worst sort of Tennessee Williams reject while her father is a Huey Long wannabe. Carter, meanwhile, is a noncharacter whose only interesting trait, collecting fish for his salt-water aquarium, turns out to be a plot device. Since his relationship with Grayson lacks nuance or romance, the fact that he may be manipulating or betraying her isn’t particularly disturbing. In truth, as the body count rises, the mystery of who did what becomes almost comically obvious—despite Dewberry’s ever-so-serious pretensions.
Run-of-the-mill psychological thriller tarted up with psychobabble.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14854-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: BlueHen/Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Awkwardly written, full of pious speechifying and annoying folksiness.
Well-meaning but meandering story of a 19th-century midwife.
Martha Cade has delivered many babies into the world, but she’s worried that folks might turn to the new doctor who’s just arrived in the little Pennsylvania town of Trinity. And she’s worried about her wayward daughter Victoria, who ran away with a traveling theater troupe. Martha had cherished the hope that Victoria would follow in her footsteps and become a midwife, too. But Martha soldiers on, strengthened by her faith in God, family, and community. The warmhearted midwife is kindness personified, sharing her homespun wisdom with one and all, and riding for miles to tend her patients. As life goes on, Martha is pleased to see that her former beau Thomas Dillon is nearly untouched by the passing years. His hair is as black and thick as ever, and he’s still a strapping, sexy man who catches every woman’s eye. Now a widower and also mayor of Trinity, he’s oh-so-eligible. But Martha, like her biblical namesake, has lots of work to do and little time for romantic foolishness. She adopts a wounded bird and names it Bird. She takes in a homeless boy and names him Boy. Life goes on. There’s always something happening, even in a little town like Trinity. Why, pranksters have somehow put the doctor’s carriage up on a roof! Looks like the naughty boys at the Hampton Academy are up to their tricks again. Can’t the Reverend Hampton control those young snippersnappers? And his Academy isn’t what it seems. When Martha finds out that the reverend, a former prison chaplain, is actually teaching the boys to steal, he and his charges escape on rafts. Then Thomas takes Martha to his bosom once more. And wayward daughter Victoria even comes home.
Awkwardly written, full of pious speechifying and annoying folksiness.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28288-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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