Defiantly bawdy, but ultimately hollow.
Where have you gone, Margaret Thatcher? A randy Britain turns its eyes to you.
Charlie is getting old—he’s about to celebrate his 70th birthday—but he’s not dead yet, not with Viagra around. (And damn the doctors who say he can’t take it because of his failing ticker.) His wife, Dorothy, stoically accepts the sexual drive the little blue pill generates in her husband, but then she’s stoic in general—so much so that she can even tolerate Charlie’s long-time mistress, Janet. Vignettes about each of Charlie’s four daughters—two with Dorothy, two with Janet—drive the latest novel by Sutton (Kid’s Stuff, 2005), who seems to believe that the conscience of a country would be obvious if only we better understood its underwear-shopping habits. Each woman is framed around her busted relationships, choice in panties and sexual need: Catherine’s a mother of three who sleeps around and resents her ex-husband’s rejection of her for another man; Zara can’t decide if she should dump her boyfriend (he can barely speak English, but he’s great in the sack); Sally satisfies herself with a garden hose; and Alicia is turned off by her boyfriend Mikey’s trips to a strip club, but ashamed of her own dalliance with a fellow teacher. Willfully pulpy, porny and junky, this novel has a few moments in which the characters’ wanton lusts make for some smart, revealing comedy—Janet’s hunt for a vibrator becomes a taut essay on divorce, motherhood and the world of retail. But mostly Sutton is a writer of little nuance whose attitude toward the people he invents borders on contempt—he captures these men and women at their most embarrassed and intimate, not just to expose them for the insecure, needy people they are, but to mock them for it. Does he mean to say that these people are sad victims of a culture that insists they fit a certain model of sexiness, or is he just taking whacks at them? The author seems unaware that there’s a distinction.
Defiantly bawdy, but ultimately hollow.Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-85242-894-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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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