Psychological seriousness adds depth to this romantic coming-of-age tale.
In this novel, an anxiety-ridden young woman finds new friends and inner resources after an apartment fire forces her to accept a neighbor’s hospitality.
Prudence Anderson—“just Pru”—25, unemployed, has just moved to Los Angeles. She’s a tall, big-boned size 16, as she tells us on Page 1. (Although the average American woman wears a 14, readers are to understand that Pru naturally considers herself too large.) As this novel opens, Pru is hitting every lonely-girl cliché: scraping ice cream off her flannel nightgown with a potato chip while watching TV with her cat. That’s when the fire starts. She and the cat escape, but the apartment is uninhabitable. Luckily, her young, cool neighbor Ellen, a playwright and director, offers to put them up. Home-schooled, shy and overprotected, Pru has a raft of anxieties; the death of her beloved therapist has made even driving her car a challenge. But in helping Ellen at the theater, Pru finds she has something to contribute—and in Adam, a handsome germophobe neighbor, she finds someone who gets her. Pru fights to resist her parents’ belittling bid to crush her independence. The Cinderella story is familiar enough, and some matters are made almost ridiculously easy for Pru; a vacationing neighbor with a huge closet of glam clothes wears Pru’s size and doesn’t mind sharing. But Pfeffer (The Wedding Cake Girl, 2012, etc.) makes wry use of the tropes by having Pru call them out from her favorite TV shows. For example, she’s wary of Blake, a charismatic actor and bad-boy romantic choice, because he reminds her of “Count Randall Blackstone, a scalawag of noble birth” from a TV series. Pfeffer also adds emotional layers; Blake is more complicated than he seems. Pru’s anxieties are genuinely crippling, and though Pru begins with a taste for the “heart-warming and inspirational,” by the end she appreciates Ellen’s dark, grim play.
Psychological seriousness adds depth to this romantic coming-of-age tale.Pub Date: March 2, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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