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THE ONLY BOY FOR ME

Name: THE ONLY BOY FOR ME
Author: Gil McNeil
ISBN: 1-58234-223-7

by Gil McNeil ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2002

Not very deep but undeniably entertaining.

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First-time novelist McNeil makes single motherhood, as sometimes suffered but mostly enjoyed by a freelance ad-producer in a quaint village near London, look awfully appealing.

The center of Annie's life is her six-year-old son Charlie, the happy result of an unhappy affair. Charlie’s father not only went back to his wife but also moved abroad, so he’s conveniently out of the picture. Annie’s job allows her to work at home much of the time. When she’s away on a commercial shoot, she depends on an enviable network of supportive friends and family. Annie recounts her daily life with the beloved but demanding Charlie—his tantrums, his food requirements, his way of sneaking into her bed at night—in a self-revealing approach reminiscent of Anne Lamott heroines. She engages us in her routines: taking Charlie to and from school, drinking (coffee or gin) with her women friends, working on comically nightmarish commercial shoots. Soon, not unexpectedly, a man enters the picture. Mac, a divorced ad executive with two kids and lots of money, is immediately as crazy about Annie as she is about him. He is handsome and romantic. He and Charlie like each other; even better, his son and Charlie quickly become best buddies. His only flaws are his less-than-total devotion to his children and his too-frequent need to be the center of attention (in other words, he’s a man). The story’s crisis occurs when Charlie comes down with meningitis. Parents, friends, and Mac rally round the distraught Annie while Charlie receives excellent medical care. He makes a speedy recovery, but not before Annie has been reminded just how precious he is to her. Weeks later, Mac takes a job in New York and asks her to marry and move there with him. Like a more mature Bridget Jones, she turns him down, leaving room for a sequel down the road.

Not very deep but undeniably entertaining.

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2002

ISBN: 1-58234-223-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.