A colorful story of personal growth that ripens in Rio.
In her debut, Martins offers the warm story of a woman’s return to the homeland she left as a child.
Rita Ray doesn’t care for personal relationships. She’s single, 37 years old, with a lucrative banking career in Manhattan after a modest upbringing in Florida. Getting ahead in the business world is her sole focus, and she adopts a cold, distant manner to keep everyone, even family, at arm’s length. But when her mother, Maia, dies unexpectedly, Rita must confront the difficult past that closed her off emotionally. When Rita was 10, Maia suddenly uprooted her from their home in Brazil and brought her to the United States. Though Maia worked hard to create a better life for them both, their close relationship deteriorated because Maia refused to discuss their former life and the circumstances that forced her to flee from Brazil with Rita. After losing her mother without regaining the closeness they once shared, Rita plans a visit to Rio de Janeiro to learn more about her family and to reconnect with Maia’s dear friend Elisabete. In the beautiful, vibrant city, long-suppressed memories rush back to Rita—her heart thaws as she begins to appreciate the hard life Maia lived and the difficult choices she made with her daughter’s well-being in mind. Rita’s rediscovery of Brazil and her growing understanding of her mother provide the novel’s greatest pleasures, despite the sometimes melodramatic flashbacks. Immigration challenges and a compelling family dynamic would be absorbing enough without the over-the-top villainy of the men in their past. In Rio, Rita also meets Gabriel, a kind and handsome ex-lawyer turned health-food chef, who offers himself as her tour guide. The city opens up in its tropic splendor on the tours provided by Gabriel and Elisabete; its history and culture are enchanting. Throughout the often sensationalized plot, Rita—more than a tourist, but not a local—also explains the city’s lively customs, which flow naturally from the narration. Sun, fun and revelations in Rio provide Rita with a much-needed sense of place in the world her mother made for her.
A colorful story of personal growth that ripens in Rio.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466441798
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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