Mawkish morass of gloom, lightly frothed with escapism. Sure to wow fans of Oprah laureate Mitchard (Twelve Times Blessed,...
Middle-aged woman beset by MS and a twerpy husband nevertheless triumphs, aided by her learning-disabled but preternaturally articulate teenaged son.
In this ungainly and overwrought sob-story, advice columnist Julieanne, an accomplished ballet dancer married to lawyer Leo Steiner, senses something awry when her leg won’t move during a Pilates stretch. Soon, Leo, who’s been courting eccentricity with New Age e-pen-pals, exercise binges, and penny-pinching, turns 49 and announces he wants a sabbatical from his job and marriage. After a trial trip, he decamps on a permanent bliss hunt. Julieanne, whose column pays a pittance, must scramble to cover the experimental Interferon shots she needs to forestall full-blown MS. Her teenage son Gabe, whose journal chronicles the far more entertaining half of this saga, steps into his father’s role with the Steiners’ late-life child, toddler Aurora, but drops out of school, where as a Special Ed student he has been mostly misunderstood. Leo’s mortified elderly parents and Julieanne’s lesbian psychologist friend Cathy also step up to help with Julieanne’s chaotic finances and MS- and chemo-induced meltdowns. Julieanne’s column is syndicated after a few entries, ghostwritten by Gabe and Cathy, amping up her reputation. Adolescent daughter Caroline, buffeted by too-abrupt personality shifts, won’t care-give, but she inaugurates a spring-break road trip, with Gabe, to retrieve Leo from his intentional community of jam-brewing weavers. Imagine their shock to learn that Leo now has an infant son and his 28-year-old consort is pregnant again. Not much else is left to the imagination, since each bump in the terrain of pain is micro-measured. But wait! Treacly, just-in-time rescue rides in with Matt MacDougall, grade-school dweeb turned wealthy and hunky surgeon, who, it turns out, still nurses a crush on Julieanne. Not only that, her poem is published by what sounds suspiciously like the New Yorker.
Mawkish morass of gloom, lightly frothed with escapism. Sure to wow fans of Oprah laureate Mitchard (Twelve Times Blessed, 2003, etc.).Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-058724-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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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