Intelligent escapism that should please Brothers Grimm lovers more than Disney fans.
In her first novel, Blackwell keeps her retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" in the once-upon-a-time past but makes the standard version’s reliance on magic subservient to a more psychological/sociological interpretation.
When aged Elise overhears her granddaughter telling the popular legend about a sleeping princess brought back to life by a kiss, she feels compelled to tell the real events she witnessed 50 years earlier while a beloved servant of King Ranolf and Queen Lenore: Aware she was the bastard offspring of an unnamed father connected to the castle where her mother once worked as a seamstress, Elise arrived at court as a teenager. Although her quick rise to becoming personal attendant to Queen Lenore made her unpopular with other servants, Elise adored her work and the gentle queen. But all was not as copacetic as it at first seemed. Lenore’s inability to bear an heir was creating a political as well as a marital crisis. Ranolf was about to buckle to pressure to name his brutal brother Bowen as successor, when Lenore returned from a journey with Ranolf’s great-aunt Millicent and announced her pregnancy. Soon, Millicent and Ranolf were locked in a power struggle over influencing Lenore, and Elise found her own allegiance to the queen compromised. And after Princess Rose was born, stubborn Ranolf banished Millicent, who vowed to destroy Ranolf’s kingdom. Whether she possessed any special power was less important than the “distrust and fear” that gradually overtook Ranolf’s rule as Rose grew up. Equally devoted to Rose as to her mother, Elise also lived her own life, complete with an early love and a complicated marriage. By the time Rose was 17, Ranolf had won a pyrrhic victory in his war against his enemies, including his brother, and Lenore had drifted under the spell of a religious fanatic. Then the kingdom faced an even greater crisis and Elise was assigned to protect Rose at all costs, including complete isolation.
Intelligent escapism that should please Brothers Grimm lovers more than Disney fans.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16623-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
PROFILES
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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