Relentless in its intimacy, feverish and yet clinical in its examination of love and lust: a gorgeous solitary romance.
A hospital stay and morphine drip after a horrendous accident make for an arresting, erotic reverie in this Canadian author’s first.
Who knew hospitals could make a person so horny? Narrator Vivienne Yellow is already in a Paris hospital when the story opens, after having her leg smashed in several places by a truck. Lying in a morphine-induced haze, she drifts through her life—concentrating on the sexual side of things. Only daughter to a womanizing, world-famous naturalist, Vivienne grew up on the road, trekking with her father to the far corners of the world, looking for little-known flora and fauna to catalogue and celebrate. Vivienne emulated his rootless and endlessly promiscuous life, travelling incessantly and racking up an impressive roster of lovers the world over. Things began to come apart for her, though, when she met Ralph, another well-known travelling naturalist, and fell recklessly, desperately in love. Mind, Vivienne’s marriage to another didn’t keep her from continuing her quest for new, disposable lovers; if anything, it accelerated it: “Love came hard for me and was too strange. Must have slept with twenty different men in the first few months of our marriage just to calm myself down.” But, now, the adultery fails to cure her feverish love for Ralph, and Vivienne’s furious jealousy is ignited when she realizes the extent of Ralph’s extracurricular love life. Brian whips all of these elements together and scatters them in a nonchronological fashion throughout the book, leavening Vivienne’s memories with the far-less interesting details of her relationship with wardmate Sonia, “a teenage boarding-school escapee with heart palpitations.” Even if Brian unfortunately distills Vivienne’s life down to a daughter’s clichéd chase after her father’s fleeting form, the poignancy of her language makes the story shine like something new.
Relentless in its intimacy, feverish and yet clinical in its examination of love and lust: a gorgeous solitary romance.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-87113-873-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
A bold but flawed debut novel.
There’s a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).
The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. “Where but in medicine,” he asks, “might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?” The question is key, revealing Verghese’s intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys’ Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it’s no surprise he’ll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.
A bold but flawed debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-41449-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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