Mothers of 18-year-olds may smile in recognition occasionally, but this is really weak.
Second novel from the author of Ready to Fall (2000), this time a low-wattage domestic comedy about a woman adjusting to her first-born’s freshman year in college.
Boston suburbanite March Monroe dropped out of college over 20 years ago to follow her then boyfriend/now husband Jeff to grad school, and she’s led a comfortable domestic life ever since, running typical women’s businesses (party planner, exercise trainer, life coach) and raising Olivia and Jackson. Now that Olivia is starting her freshman year at BU, March follows Jeff’s suggestion and enrolls at the local community college as a returning student. As part of her college curriculum, March takes on an internship at a local radio station. Who should March run into her first day at WQBM but Olivia, also applying for an internship. Olivia acts less than thrilled to see Mom, especially since March has neglected to mention that she’s back in school. Many readers, women in particular, will find March’s narration both annoyingly whiny and self-congratulatory. For all her good-natured complaining, her life is pretty TV-sitcom-perfect. Sure there are annoyances: The family pets get sick; Jackson eats junk food; Jeff doesn’t listen as well as he could, though better than most (plus he buys groceries and gives neck rubs). As for Olivia, there are no lurking problems with sex, drinking, or even identity crises—unless you count a wisdom tooth inflammation. That she’s aloof from, and easily embarrassed by, March doesn’t make for great drama. The plot, such as it is, centers on the mother-daughter radio show March and Olivia end up hosting for a good-looking radio producer with whom March carries on a very mild and brief flirtation. Each chapter begins with a cutesy multiple-choice quiz joke on mothers: hence the title.
Mothers of 18-year-olds may smile in recognition occasionally, but this is really weak.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03330-8
Page Count: 7
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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