A decidedly dark tale for those with funny bones, strong stomachs, and open minds.
Love, lust, and the occult combine in Allende’s deliciously humorous debut novel.
A small cottage in Venice, California, 1912. The household matriarch—a witch with a nefarious past—is dying and looking for absolution. She leaves behind three daughters: a pair of beautiful and narcissistic brats and one ugly, forgotten young girl. The youngest becomes the novel’s woeful protagonist whose misadventures form the backbone of this unique tale. In an unexpected twist on “Cinderella,” the nameless and voiceless girl becomes the household slave. Shunned from infancy, she has been kept in a crate, reviled by her family, and forced to care for her ungrateful half sisters. While the older sisters enjoy raucous satanic parties, cavorting with scores of dark creatures, the youngest sits at home and is told that if only she would clean more, maybe she could make it to the next demonic ball. As the years drag on, the nameless woman becomes increasingly obsessed with a desire to become young and beautiful, stumbling along as she attempts to achieve her goal. The novel’s strength is its humor, a tongue-in-cheek examination of all things occult. Allende juxtaposes the grotesque and the absurd, with often hilarious results. Readers are treated to the scene of a mother berating her youngest for ruining her prized curtains as she’s literally being dragged into hell. The novel is full of these moments in which characters fervently pray to God that their evil, murderous plans will be successful. It's darkly funny, but at times, gratuitous violence blurs the line between humor and gore: child sacrifices, multiple beheadings. A multitude of richly drawn characters adds color, such as a demon with a penchant for lipstick who helps his mistress in her quest for youth. Readers with an interest in Southern California history will enjoy subplots that look at Venice’s beatnik past as well as the rise and fall of The Gas House, a real landmark.
A decidedly dark tale for those with funny bones, strong stomachs, and open minds.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942600-49-7
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
With characters you care for, a smooth, engaging plot and an interesting reflection on values and success, romance/women’s...
Sonnet Romano has spent her adult years working hard to make a name for herself out in the real world, far away from her idyllic hometown, Willow Lake. But when life takes some unexpected turns, she may just realize that everything she’s been looking for is right back where she started.
Sonnet has checked off most of the big boxes on her "must-do-before-age-thirty" list, and she’s over-the-moon about her life in Manhattan, her job with UNESCO and the opportunities on the horizon from winning a prestigious international program fellowship. But everything comes to a screeching halt when she learns her newly married mother—who had Sonnet as a teenager and raised her as a single mom—is pregnant and sick. Forsaking the fellowship, Sonnet moves back to Willow Lake to be with her mother, risking disapproval from her father, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, and her fledgling boyfriend, who’s working on her father’s campaign. She accepts a job on a reality show being shot in the town, featuring an infamous female rapper and bunch of inner-city kids, and learns that her estranged best friend has been hired as the lead cameraman. Sonnet and Zach have been friends forever, but he is part of her past, and they are on different paths in life. Despite a sizzling newfound attraction between them, she wants her mom to get well, the baby to be born and the show to be wrapped, so she can get back to the city and her own fast track to the successful, prestigious future she’s always worked toward. But slowing down has a funny way of forcing Sonnet to take stock, and maybe her idea of a perfect life will alter with a little help from the old and new important people in her life and the picture-perfect town she grew up in.
With characters you care for, a smooth, engaging plot and an interesting reflection on values and success, romance/women’s fiction favorite Wiggs sends up another charming winner in the Lakeshore Chronicles series.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1384-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
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