In his 41st book, Michener (Creatures of the Kingdom, 1993, etc.) offers a feel-good vision of life in a complex for the elderly, oddly skewed by its young protagonist. Obstetrician Andy Zorn has been chased out of the medical profession by unfair malpractice suits and eagerly accepts a job as director of the Palms, a Florida facility consisting of residential apartments, an infirmary, and a hospice (the center's owner cautions Zorn to avoid the word because "it's ugly, frightening and reeks of death"). On the drive down to Florida from Chicago, Zorn plays good Samaritan and rescues a woman who loses her legs in a car accident, but after getting her to the hospital he scurries away for fear of being the subject of yet another malpractice suit. With his usual verbosity, Michener has Zorn handle with aplomb challenges that range from Alzheimer's to a constantly malfunctioning frozen yogurt machine in the Palms's dining room. Some of these episodes are entertaining (if in a very cozy way), but the focus is on Zorn's work in managing the facility rather than the lives of those who live there, and there is nothing surprising to win new Michener converts here. Although the Palms is described as possessing an idyllic, race-blind atmosphere, Michener occasionally exhibits racial insensitivity, as when he says of an African-American nurse, "If one looked only at her ample face, one might have expected her to speak in a typical black dialect." Often it seems as though characters are being depicted as somewhat thickheaded just to give Michener the opportunity to expound on a subject he has researched heavily; Zorn's ignorance of AIDS is frankly unimaginable. As expected, there is a fair amount of death in this book, but never without an epiphany and a heavy dose of sentimentality. When the beautiful young woman Zorn rescued on the way to Florida tracks Zorn down and insists that she can only recover under his care and he allows her to move into the Palms, an inspirational, happy ending becomes inevitable. Wooden and schematic.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43612-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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