More pratfalls, pounces, and gaseous protestations emanating from Brulagh, that Irish village of cheerful chicanery, profanity, and strong drink first celebrated hilariously in The Neon Madonna (1992). Now, among some familiar citizens, comes a wealthy young American of a shady banking-family who plans a major taking of the town in the form of a mammoth resort project. It'll all end in a tie—to the satisfaction of everyone. The auld gang from Neon Madonna are present again: expansive manipulator Mick Flannery, who now has the lucrative post of EC representative; Johnny Slattery, aided by dangerous Long John McCarthy, who's still making poteen down where the Little Folk dwell; and Fr. Jerry, who's in the best of health, though his Alpha Romeo, which he'd driven from Rome, where he was a soldier in Vatican politics, has ``committed suicide.'' Featured in this second chronicle is the beautiful, jaunty, loudmouthed Lady Alpha, sole offspring of the poverty-stricken, fox-hunting Eleventh Earl of Gallerick, who, for any money at all, must depend on Aunt Daphne (the Daft). Into Brulagh comes Luke Divareli, in his doomed Porsche, with a plan to make a killing with an improved golf course, hotels, cottages, the works. With the help of Abe, a Bronx- tongued toad—a veteran of smasher development investment—Luke pushes his plans while falling in love with Alpha. But there'll be a price as Luke weathers: a fixed horse-race, a hunt atop a mad mare (supplied by the man he'd thrown downstairs), a hurling pitch, and other local gaieties. Eventually, though, Luke is absorbed into Brulagh like a stray nut in a rummy pudding. Not as tight as Neon Madonna—too many plot threads, perhaps- -but funny indeed, with Dave Barry-like touches (a geezer's flat hat ``looked as if it could only be removed under a heavy anesthetic'') and endemically bloodshot dialogue.
Pub Date: March 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-08834-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
Intelligent, honest, and unsentimental.
Greenwood’s powerful, provocative debut chronicles a desolate childhood and a discomfiting love affair.
Wavy (short for Wavonna) is only 5 when we meet her in 1975, but she’s already been thoroughly traumatized by her meth-addicted mother, Val, whose stint in jail sends the girl to her Aunt Brenda’s house in Tulsa. Wavy barely talks and doesn’t eat—or rather, her cousins discover one night, eats out of the garbage pail when everyone else is asleep. We learn after Val is paroled and reclaims Wavy that Scary Mama has been known to stick fingers down her daughter’s throat to remove “dirty” food and then wash out Wavy’s mouth with Listerine. Her drug-dealing husband, Liam, mostly keeps to his own quarters on their ranch compound; his open infidelities send Val into fits of immobilizing depression and catatonia-inducing substance abuse, while Wavy struggles to take care of baby brother Donal and keep attending school. Only Kellen, a low-level enforcer for Liam who is also the survivor of childhood neglect, shows her any kindness or care. As the years go by in Greenwood’s episodic tale, we see this affection-starved girl and damaged man fall in love. Wavy is only 13 when their relationship turns sexual, and when Aunt Brenda finds out, she labels Kellen a rapist and works to keep them apart. The multiple narrators don’t mince words as they describe a thoroughly sordid milieu and various squalid events that climax in a violent denouement that threatens to separate Wavy and Kellen permanently. Greenwood limns her characters with matter-of-fact empathy, inviting us to respect the resourcefulness and resilience with which Wavy surmounts her dangerously disordered circumstances to craft a life and a love. It’s no storybook romance, but the novel closes on a note of hard-won serenity, with people who deserve a second chance gathered together.
Intelligent, honest, and unsentimental.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07413-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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