Unlikable heroine, mean-spirited plot.
The author of, most recently, Best Enemies (2003), introduces the “bumbo.”
Melanie Banks is a successful financial planner living in Manhattan. When she married football hero Dan Swain, the two were perfectly matched, good-looking up-and-comers. Then he blew out his knee and turned into a “bumbo”: a slacker who sponges off his hard-working wife. By the time their divorce is final, Melanie is glad to be rid of him, but she’s not so glad about the alimony she’ll be paying for years to come. When Melanie realizes that the payments stop if Dan cohabits with another woman for 90 days, she hires a matchmaker to lure her ex into new love. The plan succeeds a little too well. Not only does Dan fall head-over-heels for a gorgeous veterinarian, but this dream girl also inspires him to take a shower, put on a suit and find a job coaching football. Meeting the new-and-improved Dan, Melanie wants him back. Any woman who has dumped a loser only to see him become another woman’s Prince Charming will feel a twinge of pathos here, but such sympathy will last only until she remembers that Melanie is the diabolical creator of this sorry situation. She engineered Dan’s transformative romance with Machiavellian determination and, in the process, manipulated and lied to several people—including Dan. Melanie tries to explain why her love of lucre supercedes ethics or decency (her mother died when she was small; her father was a poor provider; she equates money with security), but this isn’t enough to make her appealing. Heller may hope that the phenomenon of well-paid women supporting their less-successful exes will become talk-show fodder—indeed, the prologue features Melanie protesting that there really are a lot of women just like her—but Heller’s story this time out doesn’t succeed as entertainment.
Unlikable heroine, mean-spirited plot.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059925-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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