A sweet story of enduring love wrapped around a tempting proposition: What if a geezer could get all the parts back in...
In Stemmle’s (Puddles from a Drooling Mind, 2014) novel, Don, aka “Stud,” and his wife, Deb, married 52 years, reveal their secret: “We still do it!”
Don narrates the fictional narrative, which is “not exactly geezer pornography….[T]his is more a story about the challenges of communication. Sex is, above all, communication. Or it should be.” And Don and Deb still “appreciate” and “communicate” with each other regularly. Maybe it’s the testosterone shots or that both work out regularly. Don openly admires Deb’s “pumpkin butt” and enjoys “feeling her up….And that’s one of the benefits of living in an empty nest—I can feel her up with impunity.” But age has taken its toll, and he can’t help but reminisce about the good old days. Deb’s recollections are somewhat different: Don’s “mistress of a career” and her life caring for their young children created a rift in their marriage. Where he recalls great sex, she “loved the orgasms—but…didn’t feel connected at all.” An odd scientific research project involving neurological studies helped reorient them in the past; now, decades later, they receive a phone call about that study. Finally admitting what the project required and the ensuing embarrassment, Deb would like to ignore the call, but Don—afflicted with the “curse of the curious”—returns it, and he learns there is the possibility of joining a current study aimed at restoring nerve function even in equipment that currently goes numb. Banter and recollections about pre-Internet times (“no twerking, no lascivious displays of cleavage and breasts bulging out of tops of teen age girls prowling the mall”) and a youth where the words you really wondered about weren’t in a dictionary should appeal to a generation not completely comfortable with devices sporting a “smart-assed electronic chickie who now answers all my questions.” Additionally, Stemmle’s entertaining euphemisms (“perky bits,” “fuzzy bits”) may appeal to readers of a certain age.
A sweet story of enduring love wrapped around a tempting proposition: What if a geezer could get all the parts back in tip-top shape?Pub Date: July 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499758337
Page Count: 174
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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