A few flaws but entertaining and romantic.
In A’s debut novel, an update of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a Nashville woman struggles with perfectionism, attraction to a Hindu filmmaker, and an overbearing mother.
Mary Poser, 23 as the novel begins, was raised to be sweet, accommodating, and cheerful. A social worker, she spreads herself thin, always running late as she frantically tries to catch up with her many commitments. Mary’s mother, a Baptist pastor’s wife, nags her to get married: “he has to be Southern, he has to be Christian, and it helps a lot if he plays the guitar”—but Jason, the mother-approved wannabe country star, has recently dumped Mary. At the Nashville Film Festival, Mary meets Simha Das, a beautiful, young filmmaker, whose next project is a Bollywood version of Persuasion. They share an instant attraction and spend the night kissing. Upset with herself, late, and trying to text and drive the next day, Mary’s car flips over a bridge into the river. She has a life-altering vision of Simha, his moonstone ring glowing with white light as he tugs her upward from watery death, but she keeps the vision to herself, becoming phobic of the bridge. Simha pursues her with sweet thoughtfulness, philosophical musings, and a night of incredible passion, but Mary feels trapped by others’ expectations. She avoids Simha and allows Jason back in her life, even though he’s far less romantic, considerate, and intelligent. Will she have a second chance to be persuaded by true love? In her debut novel, A makes excellent use of her colorful, well-described Nashville backdrop. A drawback is that Mary’s waffling and inability to stand up to her mother are developed at exasperating length. Simha is obviously perfect, maybe too perfect, while Jason is obviously a dud to almost everyone; when Mary calls herself an idiot, readers may agree. But she’s stronger than she knows, as readers can also see. Apart from overdwelling on Mary’s indecision, the novel succeeds, offering some hot erotic scenes, some surprises, a good metaphor in the uncrossable bridge, and a heroine who grows in understanding herself and her spirituality.
A few flaws but entertaining and romantic.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9876222-2-8
Page Count: 478
Publisher: Angel's Leap
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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