Danvers writes erotic melodramas about people with bizarre secret selves. A werewolf was the protagonist of his striking debut (Wilderness, 1992); this much less successful second novel features reincarnated lovers who cross paths every century. Marion Mead is a respectable middle-aged Virginia woman with two stepchildren she adores (her husband is dead). She works for the Virginia Historical Society and is also writing a novel based on a 1769 newspaper account of one Susanna Grier, who absconded from her husband Robert's plantation with a convict named Anthony. Through her research, Marion meets Raymond Lord, a rich, handsome, middle-aged bachelor with a magnificent antebellum home. Raymond appears immediately smitten with Marion (``I've been waiting for the right woman''). He offers her a journal kept by Pearl, Susanna Grier's great-granddaughter, during her 1850 voyage to Oregon to meet Frank Strickland, the man she felt destined to marry after seeing his daguerreotype. Danvers now interweaves three stories: Marion's fictional account of Susanna, Pearl's journal, and the contemporary romance between Marion and Raymond, who has both the eyes and the photographic memory she had imagined for Anthony. These coincidences don't bother her, but she does become ``deeply and inexplicably afraid'' when she finds the names of her invented characters cropping up in Pearl's journal. Challenged, Raymond comes clean: He is the latest incarnation of Anthony/Frank, just as Marion is Susanna/Pearl, and he has been waiting 143 years to tell her his story. In the closing section, Marion experiences wild mood swings as she figures out how to stand by Raymond (who is now her lover) while avoiding the grim fates of Susanna/Pearl at the hands of Anthony/Frank. A creaky narrative, a lack of feeling for historical period, and an attachment to the clichÇs of the plantation novel are the most obvious flaws of this never believable novel.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-78800-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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