An unsatisfying thriller that nonetheless contains insights into familial wounds.
Degani’s affable debut, a suspenseful novel about mothers and daughters, aims to be thrilling, socially relevant and heartwarming all at once.
Abbie Palmer feels unfulfilled. The married English professor with two children has never figured out what she wants from life. The heart of the problem lies in her unresolved issues with her mother, a movie starlet from Hollywood’s golden age,who committed suicide in the 1950s. When an African-American woman claiming to be Abbie’s half sister dies in a mysterious fire, Abbie and the dead woman’s daughter, Makenna, set out to learn the truth—not only about the fire, but also about the passions and pains of Abbie’s mother’s short life. This plot allows Degani to wade into some heady, race-related waters, including present-day hate crimes and past taboos regarding interracial relationships. However, she avoids diving too deep into these subjects, never swimming too far from the shore of her standard thriller plot. Although the book regularly reminds readers that Abbie and Makenna are in danger, the prose lacks gravitas, often relying on clichés (“My heart skips a beat”; “The past is past and maybe it should stay that way”) and overexplanations, which sometimes make the novel feel like a Nancy Drew mystery in which nothing much is at stake. The plotting also disappoints, as Abbie and Makenna have little trouble solving the mystery; each clue hides in plain sight, and the right person always shows up at the right time, making everything too easy for the amateur sleuths. It all leads to an ending that tries to be heartwarming but instead tips the scale into sappiness. That said, Abbie is a likable narrator, self-aware (“I’m a regular Kinsey Milhone from those alphabet mystery books”) and self-deprecating (“I’m ‘on leave’ from my husband to—do what? Find myself? Oh, God”). Also, in her portraits of mother-daughter relationships, Degani finds genuine weight, even if she sometimes struggles to bear it.
An unsatisfying thriller that nonetheless contains insights into familial wounds.Pub Date: April 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988125780
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Every Day Novels
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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