In addition to several novels and celeb biographies (Garland, Hepburn, etc.), Edwards has given a touch-and-glow treatment to British royals like Queen Mary (1984) and Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret (1990). Now she takes on the case of thrice-married Wallis Warfield, the Duchess of Windsor, for whom the newly minted Edward VIII gave up his throne in 1936. In her dewy youth, impecunious Bessie Wallis Warfield announces to rich, cold Uncle Sol Warfield that ``I want to make everyone in Baltimore look up to me.'' Rejected, she feels, by the Warfields, with mother Alice and Aunt Bessie struggling in genteel poverty, Bessie Wallis—gifted with striking looks, a peppery tongue, and quick wits—plots her way upward. But Wallis's first husband, Win Spenser, a Navy officer and a brute, offers no upward path. There's an erotic episode with an Argentinean diplomat, and then there's a divorce, and social nets are skillfully cast in Europe, China (a strange interlude complete with a spy and death threats), and finally England. She marries the ``endearing'' if dull Ernest Simpson (security and respectability), moves a brilliantly successful inch into high society, gains a reputation as a dazzling hostess—and then lands the ``little man,'' the Prince of Wales, the focus of Wallis's efforts, as neatly as a minnow. But the Prince's mistress, with all the prestige this entails, and with the marvelous prospect of being the king's, will be horrified when Edward—as king—intends to abdicate and marry. There he'll be, an ex-king with no country or power, wholly dependent on her...''trapped.'' Even in a fictional treatment, Edwards does not really step outside familiar Wally-and-the-Duke popular outlines, but she offers plenty of diversion—in a cheerfully empathic portrait highlighted with a bit of wry amusement.
Pub Date: May 16, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-08835-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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