A solid love story about overcoming physical and emotional odds.
In Gelberg’s debut novel, workaholics Sarah and Rick are perfect for each other—until an unexpected pregnancy makes them rethink their priorities.
The novel opens with the most shocking of images: a young baby in a hospital, bleeding from every orifice. The infant survives, but it falls to Sarah Abadhi, a lawyer working for the hospital, to figure out what went wrong. The hardworking, no-nonsense attorney quickly uncovers a series of missteps by hospital staff that led to the child being given an overdose of the anti-coagulant heparin. During her investigation, she meets Rick Smith, the pediatrician who managed to save the baby’s life, and they have an immediate connection. Together, they agree the hospital should admit fault and try to avoid a lawsuit by funneling millions into correcting hospital shortages. Their plan succeeds, and they soon start a relationship outside the office. Rick, who has no desire to start a family, is perfectly content to discover that an old chlamydia infection has made Sarah infertile. However, not long after their courtship begins, Sarah becomes pregnant. Practical as always, she decides to leave the relationship to have the child, believing this may be her only chance to conceive, and relinquishes Rick of responsibility for the baby. Rick accepts these terms. The two separate but are brought together again shortly after the child is born, after a series of unpredictable events make them both re-evaluate their desires. The story’s message is ultimately a hopeful one—about forgiveness, compassion and second chances. The novel’s prose, particularly its dialogue, can be a bit flat at times (“I want us to be friends as well as lovers,” Rick tells Sarah matter-of-factly), and although the characters are likable, they don’t feel particularly complex. The overall story, however, moves along well; the plot builds nicely to keep readers sufficiently interested and curious, and its secondary characters, such as Sarah’s Jewish grandmother, add some engaging flavor.
A solid love story about overcoming physical and emotional odds.Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482326222
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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