Lighthearted look at the irrationality of dating, courtesy of second-novelist Robinson (Between Brothers, 2001).
Young, black, single—and mad as hell.
Mitchell Stone just had his heart surgically removed somewhere between dinner and dessert by yet another beauty who thinks nice guys are boring. Nikki Coleman, his former high school classmate and now his colleague at Empire Records, blew him off when he asked her whether she ever wanted to be more than friends. If what women want are heartless, no-good, two-timing Dogs, Players, and Ladies’ Men, then Mitchell is going to turn himself into one of the above—or all three. But first he’s got to get the details right: filling in his bald spot with black shoe polish isn’t going to attract anyone truly fine. So, in order to find a teacher, he throws a party for some of the most trifling, disrespectful, deadbeat-daddy black men in Chicago. His dissolute friend Tony takes on the thankless task of building a bad reputation for Mitchell, aided by a monitoring system that enables him to be sure that Mitchell gets laughed at, ignored, cussed, and slapped by women of every hue, height, race, and socioeconomic level. As Mitchell points out, though, Player does not run deep in his family lines. Most of the Stone men were Do Right types, and he’s really no different. Everyone from Naomi Wolf to Dr. Rhonda Watts, a leader of “What’s Love Got To Do With It” seminars, gets a few words in on the nature and inherent inequality of male-female relationships as Mitchell bounces in and out of trouble and Nikki copes with a lecherous boss whom she ultimately sues. When a one-night stand with luscious Gina later has Mitchell believing that he’s the father of her unborn baby, Nikki realizes that she loves and hates him almost in the same breath. Is he the father, or isn’t he? Only the DNA test knows for sure.
Lighthearted look at the irrationality of dating, courtesy of second-novelist Robinson (Between Brothers, 2001).Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-76047-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Nobody writing today surpasses the precocious Waters’s virtuosic handling of narrative complexity and thickly textured...
Imagine a university-educated lesbian Charles Dickens with a similarly keen eye for mendacity and melodrama, and you’ll have some idea of the pleasures lurking in Waters’s impudent revisionist historicals: Tipping the Velvet (1999), Affinity (2000), and now this richly woven tale of duplicity, passion, and lots of other good stuff.
It begins as the narrative of 17-year-old Susan Trinder, an orphan resident of the criminal domicile run by Hogarthian Grace Sucksby, a Fagin-like “farmer” of discarded infants and den-mother to an extended family of “fingersmiths” (i.e., pickpockets) and assorted confidence-persons. One of the latter, Richard Rivers (a.k.a. “Gentleman”), engages Susan in an elaborate plot to fleece wealthy old Mr. Lilly, a connoisseur of rare books—as lady’s maid “Susan Smith” to Lilly’s niece and ward Maude, a “simple, natural” innocent who will be married off to “Mr. Rivers,” then disposed of in a madhouse, while the conspirators share her wealth. Maidservant and mistress grow unexpectedly close, until Gentleman’s real plan—a surprise no reader will see coming—leads to a retelling of events we’ve just witnessed, from a second viewpoint—which reveals the truth about Mr. Lilly’s bibliomania, and discloses to a second heroine that “Your life was not the life that you were meant to live.” (Misdirections and reversals are essential components of Waters’s brilliant plot, which must not be given away.) Further intrigues, escapes, and revelations climax when Susan (who has resumed her place as narrator) returns from her bizarre ordeal to Mrs. Sucksby’s welcoming den of iniquity, and a final twist of the knife precipitates another crime and its punishment, astonishing discoveries about both Maude and Susan (among others), and a muted reconciliation scene that ingeniously reshapes the conclusion of Dickens’s Great Expectations.
Nobody writing today surpasses the precocious Waters’s virtuosic handling of narrative complexity and thickly textured period detail. This is a marvelous novel.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2002
ISBN: 1-57322-203-8
Page Count: 493
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
The queen of Texas melodrama takes metaphor perhaps a step too far as she pits her heart-transplant-patient heroine against a serial killer obsessed with stopping her new heart. Having as a child survived Hodgkin's disease, her parents' double suicide, and life in a series of substandard foster homes, feisty redhead Cat Delaney is more than able to wisecrack her way through a heart transplant operation at the peak of her career. Famous as a star of the television soap opera Passages, Cat experiences both a literal and figurative change of heart after her surgery, abruptly opting to drop her acting career, move to San Antonio, and create a local news segment aimed at matching abandoned children with good adoptive homes. She breaks off an affair with Dr. Dean Spicer, her wealthy cardiologist, and falls madly in love with Alex Pierce (``His tongue was nimble, his appetite carnal''), a Houston cop turned mystery writer whose sudden appearance in her life may not be coincidental. When newspaper articles describing murders of other heart transplantees begin appearing in Cat's mailbox, she realizes she's being stalked by a lunatic obsessed with stilling the heart of a loved one who may or may not be her donor. As the anniversary of Cat's transplant nears, the threat of violence grows greater. But from which direction comes the danger?: From her hostile secretary, possibly related to a woman who was murdered on the day of her transplant? From the stepfather of one of Cat's orphan clients, whose greatest rival may have been Cat's donor? Or (horrors) from sexy Alex, whose past holds more secrets than she could ever guess? Highly schematic and hastily sketched, this nevertheless provides a satisfying dose of Brown's (Where There's Smoke, 1993, etc.) famously raunchy sex scenes (`` `I want to know I'm with a man. I want to be taken. I want—' `You want to be fucked.' ''), and a certain raw enthusiasm that will no doubt increase her legion of fans. (First printing of 300,000; Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: May 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-446-51656-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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