The irrepressible Clara is also irresistible: as she deconstructs and reconstructs herself endlessly, there are insights...
An enormously charming, often scabrously funny first novel by English columnist Knight, who takes a vivacious approach to a once-happily-married woman beset with weighty issues—and two lively wee boys.
Eight years into her marriage, Clara has a sinking feeling that something isn't right. It isn't her kids; she loves them to pieces, even though their needs make mincemeat of her freelance writing schedule. It isn't her friends, although one has just gotten pregnant from a one-night stand and another's husband has started an affair with one of his office help. It isn't her imperious, magnificently packaged mother, about to be wed for the fourth time. It isn't even her disastrous interview with a rising star in the dance world, an Irishman she mortally offended by calling him a “poof.” No, it has everything to do with the dashing and impeccable, aloof and workaholic Robert: her husband. While they’re kind and loving toward each other, Clara doesn't get the feeling that they're in love anymore—and it doesn't help that she's putting on pounds worrying about it. She wants romance back in her life, and as a way of getting it decides to attend a dinner she’s been invited to by the Irish dancer, who inexplicably seems to have forgiven her and wants her there to celebrate his triumph on the London stage. She makes a stunning entrance, wowing Robert and the other men in the room, and while she awakens the next morning with the mother of all hangovers, hope is in the air. She and Robert go to Paris alone for a weekend, but Clara's vision of how it will go proves faulty at best, even though, in the end, she gets what she wished for.
The irrepressible Clara is also irresistible: as she deconstructs and reconstructs herself endlessly, there are insights aplenty about making do, holding on, and letting go.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-09397-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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