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I DID (BUT I WOULDN’T NOW)

No great shakes, but at least this one has bar fights, psycho exes, drug use and a constantly urinating dog to keep up...

The selfish sister of an uptight chick-lit heroine gets her own book.

In this sequel to 2003’s I Do (But I Don’t), which was made into a Lifetime TV movie, Lockwood gives the spotlight to the rebellious and irresponsible sister of Lauren, the wedding planner heroine of the previous book. When this one opens, black sheep Lily Crandell is on a plane to London, having left her rock-star husband Ted Dayton after finding him making out with an actress in a bar. So Lily’s hopping across the pond for some R&R with ex-boyfriend Carter (they are now strictly platonic). For Lily, ending it with Ted proved messy: Not only did she knee him in the crotch at the bar, resulting in an assault charge, but afterwards, she charged $40,000 to his credit card, advertised his cell and home phone numbers on a billboard and stole her sister’s passport in order to travel. As Lily repeatedly says, “I may, quite possibly, be a bad person.” But given the laundry list of unctuous offenses attributed to Ted, it’s unlikely that many readers will hold her occasionally deranged behavior against her; chalk it up to the spunk of a good Texas girl. London proves no less drama-ridden than Austin, with Lily landing right in the middle of a psychotic relationship between quailing Carter and his deranged stalker girlfriend (and boss). Although she’s trying to act responsibly for once (except for that whole losing-her-sister’s-passport thing), by staying well away from Ted and even volunteering at the hospital where Carter works, Lily lands back in the tabloids with little difficulty. Though occasionally bereft of imagination, Lockwood’s tale builds nicely to a slapstick finale—a marked improvement over her first time around.

No great shakes, but at least this one has bar fights, psycho exes, drug use and a constantly urinating dog to keep up reader morale.

Pub Date: May 2, 2006

ISBN: 0-7434-9943-3

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Downtown Press/Pocket

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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THE VEGETARIAN

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.

Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015

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