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
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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