A maudlin debut novel by a young Brit about romantic failure, filled with trendy musings on the transgressive (S/M, child abuse, pornography) in contemporary culture. Gabriel Jones, the narrator, offers us a long look back at his impossibly tragic, sordid life. He is currently living in London in a kind of limbo, and he hopes that by mulling over his past failures he can come to grips with the demons that drive him. “Begin with Hope,” he tells himself, but he isn—t talking about the emotion. Hope turns out to be the expensive prostitute who gets him over his bouts of despair about Alicia, whose love he betrayed because of Katherine. In fervid, gushy prose—some of it quite good, yards of it over the top—Gabriel delivers what feels like the longest college all-night confessional in history. How he fell in love with Alicia: “Nothing prepared me for soulful sex, sex that didn’t retain its lust at the expense of its love, sex . . . with someone I genuinely liked.” How Alicia, by deciding to do a feminist study of porn, introduced the worm—a centerfold spread that reminds Gabriel of how, when he was eight years old, he was initiated into sex by next-door neighbor Katherine, who he then witnessed being abused by a pig-mask—wearing father (as Mummy looked on). How Alicia then finds him diddling an on-stage stripper with a cherry lollipop (can’t help himself, it’s in his childhood). Six years later, Gabriel is offered a chance reunion with the lovely Alicia. But Hope is retiring that very night, and when Gabriel shows up to pay his respects, he happens to be wearing a pig mask (went to a costume party, you know), which shocks Hope into revealing herself as . . . Katherine. Too traumatized to keep his rendezvous with Alicia, Gabriel sinks into his current state of picturesque decline. Unpleasant and unpersuasive: politically correct prudery mixed with unbridled sex.
Pub Date: May 28, 1998
ISBN: 1-57322-094-9
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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