Atmospheric, if uneven, melodramatic obstacle-course to true love set in the glory days of the British Empire, in 1920's Hong Kong—in another historical romance from the New Zealand-born Worboys (Aurora Rose, 1988, etc.). Young, naive Hellen North falls off her horse and into the arms of Oliver Marathon, dashing nephew of the Governor of Hong Kong. She's a farmer's daughter; he's the future Earl of Stradlock: they've met before (in another lifetime), so ``their love, inexplicable, unbidden...and all-consuming'' is predestined— despite Oliver's duties to Empire and family, which call him back to Hong Kong before the two can marry. Hellen takes the next boat, where slick George Curtain, who is ``that dreadful thing, socially not quite,'' mistakes her for a rung on the social ladder: he abducts, rapes (not once, but twice), and marries her before she gets to Hong Kong. Scared of a scandal, Hellen passively accepts the marriage, reasoning that ``a contract is a contract,'' and the second rape ``an Act of God.'' Fortunately, however, the ``all- seeing, all powerful'' fate that brought Oliver and Hellen together, then ``crowned them with thorns, caught them in traps, [and] heaped disasters on their heads'' brings them together again- -and gives George his just deserts. This is the Orient, where ``good joss and timing'' account for everything—including, it seems, the fascination that these two milquetoasts have for each other. Readers who can ignore the pidgin English, the stereotypically ``inscrutable'' Chinese, and the karmic silliness will enjoy the local color and history.
Pub Date: Dec. 8, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-08156-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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 presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
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