A lukewarm affair.
Maybe rock-’n’-roll will never die, but the two love-scorned exes in this romantic comedy certainly wish it would.
Philippa graduates from her Cincinnati prep school without a backward glance. She leaves her classmates and her divorced, alcoholic mother for London, where she lives rent-free in her father’s plush apartment. Nightly, she and boyfriend Trevor, lead guitarist for NHS (National Hate Service), troll the pubs and explore the local music scene on her father’s dime. But when Trevor catches Philippa cheating on him, his revenge is swift: He writes a one-hit wonder, “Philippa Cheats,” and the song’s success drives her back home. Meanwhile, Mark, still grieving over the death of his little sister, who was hit by a truck, meets Raquel, whose mother committed suicide. The two share solace and love through their college years until Rock-L, as she refers to herself once she leaves Mark for the California music scene, makes it big with a hit single called “Two Minute Man,” about her ex-boyfriend’s shortcomings. Hailed as a feminist cri de coeur, the song wounds Mark profoundly. Back to Philippa, waitressing in Cincinnati and using cocaine. This leads to years of ill-chosen boyfriends, the last of whom threatens her life if she leaves him, which she promptly does, under an assumed identity and secretly pregnant. Over to Mark, who establishes himself in Boston, where he spends his days teaching first-graders, and long nights wondering if he’ll ever have sex again. Told in alternating chapters, the novel tracks the two break-up victims as they assuage their public humiliation and learn to love again. Halpin (Donorboy, 2004, etc.) writes sweetly about young men and women trying to carve out a decent life in contemporary times, but this novel leans too heavily on summary to cover the 20 years it takes to bring the two unwitting muses together.
A lukewarm affair.Pub Date: March 13, 2007
ISBN: 0-8129-7702-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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