Generic.
A Weepstakes contender about the ravages of cancer and how to come to an understanding of the deaths of loved ones.
It’s not Dr. (the psychologist kind) Anna Carroll’s first experience with death, and certainly not with cancer, either, but it’s up there among the most painful of events for her when her friend ever since girlhood, Beth O’Neill (lawyer), dies of breast cancer, leaving two girls and husband behind. Even though the Florida-dwelling Anna has her own call-in-for-advice radio show and is a well-known author of books about how to cope (the first entitled You Are Your Own Worst Enemy, the second the ripsnorting Get a Grip! Quit Whining, and Take Charge of Your Life), she’s nevertheless truly bummed by Beth’s loss of her 18-month struggle with the disease. As Anna says in another context, she needs “time alone to recharge and recenter,” so off she goes for a solo November weekend in the empty house of friends (he a heart doctor, she a designer), where she’ll hope to pull herself together. There, she meets a stranger, a man with “deep soulful eyes,” whose name she never thinks to ask (pardon me?), to whom she spills out the entire story of her life, who rides around on a bicycle and has a habit of appearing and disappearing like, well, you know, a spirit or something. This soulful person’s advice to Anna, as a means of healing her pain over Beth’s death, is to write to the dead woman, which Anna does, and soon enough, yes, there’s Beth, in the room, dead, but just as she’d been in life, talking reassuringly to the weeping Anna. There’ll be more tears before the weekend is over, as the nameless man gains a name, bears to Anna tidings not of joy but of a most, most deep bittersweetness, allowing her at last to get a grip and head back to Florida.
Generic.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2000
ISBN: 0-446-52657-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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