An often entertaining novel about how life can turn out when careers and marriages don’t happen as planned.
In Mulligan’s (Watch Me Disappear, 2012, etc.) novel, three young Bostonians search for real happiness, whatever that may be.
When Abby gets sick while tending bar on New Year’s Eve, her boyfriend, Nathaniel, isn’t available to help her. Instead, he’s at a house party in Worcester, Mass., where he unexpectedly finds his unrequited high school love, Maggie Monahan, freshly divorced and back from California. There, they share a kiss as Abby, back in Boston, takes one pregnancy test after another, eventually confirming her worst fear. She decides that she will have the baby, even though Nathaniel, a philosophy professor and former rock musician, has a drinking problem. Meanwhile, Maggie navigates the choppy waters of living at home with a useless liberal arts degree, until she finally picks up a job at Macy’s and makes a new best friend. Abby’s own best friend, Breanna, prepares for her wedding while tending to Abby’s needs as a mother-to-be. Nathaniel fails to show up to support her pregnancy, instead pining for Maggie and sleeping with another woman. All of their lives collide when Nathaniel’s band comes together for a reunion show, and the main characters must define what adulthood means to each of them, which leads to some hard decisions and happy endings. The novel unfolds in alternating chapters from the perspectives of Abby, Nathaniel and Maggie, which keeps the story moving but never allows readers to get close to any one character. The episodic pace keeps the story clear but predictable, much like the characters’ emotional baggage: Nathaniel is haunted by an alcoholic father who never believed in him, and Maggie is wary of letting another man with a drinking problem into her life. The epiphanies come hard and fast as the novel winds down, making for a rushed conclusion in which every character accepts his or her lot in life. It may not be the most original modern romance, but many readers will find comfort in its familiarity. Bostonians will particularly enjoy the novel’s sprawling Massachusetts backdrop and its authentic assortment of bars, T stops and small-town details.
An often entertaining novel about how life can turn out when careers and marriages don’t happen as planned.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1304602213
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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