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LAUGHING DOG

Name: LAUGHING DOG
Author: D.C. Burns

by D.C. Burns ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2011

Take comfort in Burns’ big-hearted philosophy.

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A woman, her family and her effervescent dog come together to navigate life and love in this surprising story.

Lauren McKintock was once a strong, lithe, almost 6-foot-tall ballet dancer. She was an imposing physical presence, but was and still is vulnerable and emotionally damaged. So when multiple sclerosis began to ravage her body, the distress of not being able to dance was compounded by simmering, unresolved childhood grief; a downward spiral ensued. Fortunately, Lauren was raised a proud Okie, so she ultimately takes pride in her strength and optimism. She develops for herself a new kind of dancing, one that involves not classical ballet, but the deceptively simple maneuvers of staying upright and walking a straight line—it’s a tremendously difficult task because every muscle in her body works against her. When she’s alone in Denver without the proper medication, remaining positive throughout the struggle is an almost impossible task. But back home in Edmond, Okla.—with her family, fresh air and a farm where outdoor labor becomes its own kind of dance—a better healing process begins. It doesn’t hurt that she’s blessed with sassy, headstrong relatives who aren’t afraid to kick up some dirt and break the law; nor does it hurt that a kind, handsome—and single—surgeon moved in next door during her absence. While this arrangement might seem culled from a shallow romance novel, Burns has a gift for pulling the reader in with the warmth and nobility of her characters. Her prose is full of clarity and resoluteness that mirrors Lauren’s mindset. The degree of autobiographical influence is left unclear, but Burns writes as though, like Lauren, she was once lost and has now found peace. There are certainly shortcomings (like odd Seventh Seal-like philosophical asides in which Lauren converses with God and asks him the “big” questions), but as the story moves on, those lapses are forgiven, and any cynical reservations fall away in the comfort of Lauren’s world.

Take comfort in Burns’ big-hearted philosophy.

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2011

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: CrossTimbers

Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.