Vintage Bradford, with lavish descriptions of the pleasures of palate and palette, victims as virtuous as they are gorgeous,...
Bradford’s latest rags-to-riches heroine is a London fine-art consultant with a dark secret—several of them, in fact.
Annette Remmington is still plagued by nightmares of the childhood sexual abuse she suffered. Rescued by a kindly aunt who paid for her education, Annette had a brief career as a painter before her marriage to dashing gallery impresario Marius Remmington, 20 years her senior. Only Marius knows of Annette’s other dark secret, which gives him leverage to keep her complacent and docile. When inquiries are made about a certain Hilda Crump, Annette fears that if the truth were known, she could land in jail for murder. Now 40, Annette has scored a coup. A new client, Christopher, has inherited a cache of art from his eccentric Uncle Alec, including a Rembrandt, which Annette has just auctioned for several million pounds. There are plenty more canvases lurking at the gloomy old castle formerly owned by Uncle Alec, who, everyone agrees, went a little dotty after his fiancée, clad in her wedding gown, hanged herself in the bedroom. Annette is planning another auction for Christopher, which will include a previously unknown cast of Degas’ sculpture The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, and paintings by other Impressionist masters. However, Annette and her advisors have discovered that several pieces in Uncle Alec’s collection are forgeries. When Marius insists she promote her upcoming auction, she agrees to talk to Jack Chalmers, a reporter Marius has handpicked. Little does Marius suspect that Annette and Jack will immediately recognize each other as soul mates. And little does Annette know that when Marius is in Barcelona supposedly working on a book about Picasso, he’s actually emulating Picasso’s philandering behavior. The plotlines proliferate until we realize that secrets from Jack’s childhood are the key to unlocking the dilemmas keeping him and Annette apart.
Vintage Bradford, with lavish descriptions of the pleasures of palate and palette, victims as virtuous as they are gorgeous, cruel lotharios and a satisfying if somewhat far-fetched resolution.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-57808-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
IN THE NEWS
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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