Noble conforms to the conventions of contemporary women’s lit—the struggle to balance friends, career, romance and...
A bittersweet romance between two lonely 40-year-olds who were once teenage lovers.
For nine years, Susannah has lived an undemanding life with Douglas in London, but it’s missing a lot: passion, commitment, children and, Susannah is beginning to think, love. At her brother’s quaint village wedding, Susannah bumps into Rob, her teenage boyfriend, the man not even her first husband could compare to. After pleasantries they part, but memories of their relationship begin to haunt Susannah, and they exist in stark contrast to the everyday tedium she shares with Douglas. Worse than the domestic humdrum is that his three children are often in her care, but Douglas has made it clear that she is neither their mother nor friend, which leaves her as little more than housekeeper when they visit. Susannah is isolated in their home and so retreats to recollections of her youth and those almost forgotten dreams of true love and a houseful of children. She and Rob experienced the kind of teenage passion that is familiar but seems extraordinary, that perfect expression of love, blossoming sexuality and boundless hope. As she relives her first love, the other constant of her youth, best friend Amelia, is struck with cancer. It seems nothing is right, and then the unexpected changes Susannah’s life—Rob calls and asks to meet. Retired from the RAF and now living in London (his new wife Helena is stationed in Afghanistan), Rob and Susannah begin meeting casually to reminisce, seeking out quiet corners of museums to talk, but soon enough they are in love again. What to do? Do they deserve happiness more than Douglas and Helena? Are they meant to be? Love is finally tested when Helena returns from the war injured.
Noble conforms to the conventions of contemporary women’s lit—the struggle to balance friends, career, romance and babies—yet still delivers a poignant romance in which the ideals of young love confront the grimmer realities of an adult world.Pub Date: March 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5485-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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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