bookshelf

HIATUS

Name: HIATUS
Author: Belangela G. Tarazona
ISBN: 978-8793239128

by Belangela G. Tarazona ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 29, 2015

A lovely, sentimental gay romance with a very modern twist.

bookshelf

A heart-rending tale of second chances in love and life by Tarazona (A Better World, 2014).

A chance encounter at a 1991 screening of Thelma & Louise brings former lovers Michael and Frank together for the first time since their own summer fling near the Grand Canyon decades earlier. But their meeting is cut short by the return from the restroom of Michael’s wife, Nadja, a famous novelist for whom he’d broken off their relationship long ago. More than 20 years later, in 2014, Frank’s deceased aunt, Emma—whose spirit visits him on a biweekly basis—interrupts his tryst with a hot young lover to inform him of Nadja’s death from breast cancer. Unable to avoid the memorial, Frank can’t get Michael off his mind. However, Michael is busy coping with his grief, his wife’s estate, his art-lamp business, and his sometimes-difficult relationships with his grown children. Michael and Frank go on to deal with other life-changing events, including the vandalism of Frank’s art gallery and a scary medical diagnosis. Finally, Michael decides that he wants to be with the man he’s always loved. Michael’s son, Sebastian, accepts this turn of events without hesitation, but his pricklier daughter, Helenne, requires more convincing. In this touching novel of redemption and love, Michael receives poignant, beyond-the-grave advice from Nadja; she’d recognized Michael and Frank’s abiding love and left Michael a message to “Find him, before it’s too late.” The light paranormal element of Frank’s receiving visits from his aunt Emma, who will only enjoy eternal rest once he’s found happiness, enhances rather than detracts from the plot. The story’s ending may seem a bit pat, with everyone suddenly getting along and playing at being a happy family, but it softens what would have otherwise been a heartbreaking conclusion.

A lovely, sentimental gay romance with a very modern twist.

Pub Date: April 29, 2015

ISBN: 978-8793239128

Page Count: 188

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: June 8, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.