A careful examination of family ties with an international flavor.
A mother and daughter make separate journeys and come to new understandings about themselves and their relationships in Townsend’s (Imperfect Pairings, 2013, etc.) novel.
Though her life is outwardly full and prosperous, Rhonda Knight feels lost as she turns 47. She runs the Knight Foundation, a charity, but her children have left home; her estranged sister, Evelyn, died abroad two years ago; and her divorce is now final. She was never a believer in passionate, romantic love; she thinks it just gets most people, like her adopted daughter Olivia’s biological parents, into trouble. Nineteen-year-old Olivia, meanwhile, has always felt out of step in her family. Her passion is theater, but seeing no future in it, she’s studying pre-law. She’s not athletic like her older brothers or Rhonda, who’s an Olympic volleyball gold medalist. Now, two years after Evelyn’s death, mother and daughter take separate trips. Olivia is asked to Hanoi, Vietnam, by Marco Rossellini, Evelyn’s former lover, who has some of her old things. Meanwhile, Rhonda, not knowing of her daughter’s journey, flies to Italy hoping to confront Marco at his home; she resents him, in part, for the influence he had on Evelyn. Instead, Rhonda meets Marco’s daughter, Carlotta, who’s training as an Olympic fencer. Both trips spark memories, reflections, and new determination in both mother and daughter while revealing life-changing family secrets. Townsend has a lyrical, emotional style that’s especially evident in the Vietnam section but also in smaller moments, as when Rhonda squints at her Olympic medal, “waiting for the heat of it to embroil her as it always did when she stole this secret moment for herself.” A sense of realism helps anchor the story, in details of Olympic training or the Knight family’s financial arrangements. The prose can become clichéd at times (“her parents’ divorce had left a big, gaping hole in the fabric of her being”), but overall, this complicated family, full of ambitious women, makes a fresh impression.
A careful examination of family ties with an international flavor.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943006-21-2
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Spark Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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