Despite her typical wit, intelligence and discernment, Giffin may not be able to win her audience with this problematic...
After the death of a beloved family friend, Shea Rigsby realizes she’s been treading water. Will a spectacular new job and a fairy-tale romance change everything or simply remind her of what she truly loves?
At 33, Shea is in a listless relationship and has a fun but dead-end job at her hometown alma mater, Walker University. Walker is in Texas, where football is right next to God, and its highly successful football program has been under the sage and celebrated guidance of head coach Clive Carr for years. Shea’s practically a member of the Carr family; her mom is best friends with Connie, Coach’s wife, and Shea’s been best friends with their daughter, Lucy, since birth. But after Connie succumbs to cancer, everyone is emotionally unmoored, and they collectively decide to focus their energy on moving Shea forward. Breaking off with her aimless boyfriend opens up space for a thrilling new relationship with a former Walker superstar now playing in the NFL. And with a little help from Coach, she lands her dream job as a Dallas sports reporter. But even as everything seems to be going so well, Shea is a little stunned to find that she isn't really happy and that her job as a reporter may force her to face some unsettling truths about her star-kissed boyfriend, the world of college sports and the man she’s had a lifelong crush on—for the good and the bad. Best-seller Giffin (Where We Belong, 2012, etc.), known for her insightful exploration of women’s deepest desires, has taken on a hard-sell storyline in her newest novel. While her in-depth look at football, family dynamics and unexpected romance is both compelling and perceptive, it also takes some disconcerting turns, and readers may find the story ventures too far outside their comfort zones.
Despite her typical wit, intelligence and discernment, Giffin may not be able to win her audience with this problematic romantic journey.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-54688-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2014
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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