Worse, the cliché-ridden novel sends uncomfortable cues: Are readers really supposed to blame Clarissa’s younger brother for...
A self-consciously erudite cockatoo narrates this avian-human romance from Rubio (The Woodsman’s Daughter, 2005, etc.).
In 1993, cockatoo Caruso lives on Ocracoke Island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks with Clarissa, a redheaded chef who whips up ambitious culinary delicacies while declaring her own favorite foods remain her beloved late grandmother's traditional Southern dishes. (Health-conscious readers may cringe at a chef who never seems to wash her hands and lets her bird loose in the kitchen.) Caruso became a domestic pet after he was kidnapped from his bird family in Australia years earlier. One smart cockatoo, Caruso is given to ruminating on man’s narcissistic self-importance, following the teachings of the “Great Mother” and quoting Emily Dickinson. That appreciation of poetry came from Caruso’s first owner, Theodore. A saintly romantic, Theodore retired from his career as headmaster of a boys school to move next door to the woman he’d silently loved since childhood despite her long marriage to a rich bully. Before entering a nursing home, Theodore introduced Caruso to concepts of love the bird carries with him as he faces a similar romantic crisis of his own. Caruso is in love with the giggly, annoyingly sweet Clarissa and basks in her attentive affection. Then Clarissa meets Joe, who has come to surf on Ocracoke while on summer break from studying environmental law. Clarissa's past boyfriends didn't threaten Caruso, but she seems serious about Joe. Plucking out his feathers in avian distress, Caruso begins plotting to win Clarissa back. Unfortunately, the cockatoo companion Clarissa finds to mollify Caruso only annoys him before fatally diving headlong into a pot of pasta sauce after a tantalizing feather Caruso has purposely dropped—a moment of unintentional comic relief in the slog through whimsy and New Age–y environmentalism.
Worse, the cliché-ridden novel sends uncomfortable cues: Are readers really supposed to blame Clarissa’s younger brother for being emotionally troubled or dislike her sous chef because he’s effeminate?Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61822-031-8
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Ashland Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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