An uneven love story with intriguing historical details.
A man contemplates his marriage, family, and life in this contemporary romance with philosophical themes.
Philosophy Ph.D. candidate Brendan Ryan fulfills his dream of a Thoreau-like existence in Maine when he escapes Boston and his unhappy wife for a cabin in Caribou, where he embarks on “his personal search for truth, his search for the meaning of existence.” He plans to spend the summer reading and rekindling a relationship with his son, Corey. The two are having a good time, but a conflict arises when Brendan is reunited with a French-accented beauty, Cosette Fontaine, at the local diner. They met when he passed through Maine while purchasing the cabin. Named after the tragic character in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables as a tribute to her Acadian heritage, the alluring waitress stands out in the small town. Brendan is immediately attracted to her open nature, so unlike his pinched and constantly complaining wife. He and Cosette engage in a light affair in spite of his marriage that quickly accelerates into love. Brendan is soon musing that “maybe my search for truth is over, my dear sweet angel—I may have found it right here with you.” But the unanswered questions involving his wife and marriage and whether he will return to Boston in the fall remain. At its heart, Carroll’s (Slum Fever, 2015, etc.) ambitious novel is more about Acadian history in Maine than a summer romance or philosophical journey. He delivers plenty of rich, vivid period details, including about the Ku Klux Klan’s role in the 1920s (“Prejudice against French-speaking Americans, especially Acadian French-speaking, began when the Klan came in”). But the story is populated by stock characters: the downtrodden husband, the fat harridan of a wife, the enchanting waitress, and the folksy, proverb-spouting handyman. Readers will struggle to identify with serial adulterer Brendan, who recalls his affairs with two sexy undergraduates. And Cosette seems bipolar, one minute playing coy, the next cursing about a rude waitress (“It’s really time for her to fucking croak!”).
An uneven love story with intriguing historical details.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 281
Publisher: Vanity Press Books
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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