A sometimes provoking meditation on the elusiveness of genius and desire that’s also, all too often, no more illuminating...
A retelling of the love story between Robert and Clara Schumann that owes less to The Barretts of Wimpole Street than to Raging Bull.
At curtain’s rise, the dying composer, committed to a mental asylum after throwing himself into the Rhine, is looking back over the ruins of his life. A survey of the facts reveals a familiar story—Romantic artist with no financial prospects woos and wins prodigiously talented bride away from autocratic father before going on to his own well-remembered success—which Landis (Lying in Bed, 1995) updates by brushing off the powdered sugar. Schumann often did behave as dissolutely as the outraged Friedrich Wieck claimed. He scattered his love broadcast, even after he’d met the nine-year-old Clara and become her father’s live-in piano pupil. And, mainly because his wife, not he, enjoyed a career as a virtuoso, he never won the public acclaim accorded his contemporaries Paganini, Chopin, Mendelssohn, or Liszt (all of whom make important appearances here) or his protégé Brahms (the obligatory third party, hopelessly but platonically in love with Clara, in any fictional treatment of the couple). Although Landis paints a harrowing picture of Schumann’s final disintegration, however, his determination to paint his musical world in such detail prevents him from ever focusing on the composer at work, or, more damagingly, from creating a convincing romance between him and Clara: He marches dutifully through each new stage of their intoxicatingly progressive intimacy without ever earning the changes he chronicles. And Landis’s incessant factual footnotes on everything from the Sacher Torte to the Third Reich, presumably intended as postmodern thumbs in the eye of Romantic biography, come across as pedestrian and sappy.
A sometimes provoking meditation on the elusiveness of genius and desire that’s also, all too often, no more illuminating than a late-night rerun of Song of Love minus Paul Henreid, Katharine Hepburn, and Robert Walker. (Author tour)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-100453-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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