O’Connell makes this sweet treat go down smoothly thanks to snappy dialogue and evocative scenes of Chicago in the summer.
O’Connell (Bachelorette #1, 2003) takes another stab at poolside reading, this time examining the disparate worlds of pop music and corporate law.
Jane Marlow, a buttoned-up Chicago attorney, is gunning for partnership at her law firm. In her determined effort to get ahead, she has woefully neglected all the other areas of her life: family, friends and especially romance. Life gets deliciously complicated for Jane when her slacker brother, Andy, discovers that a decade-old pop song, “Janey 245,” was written about her. While Jane learns to kick up her heels and enjoy her celebrity status as “Janey,” Teddy Rock, the song’s author, is attempting to make a comeback. After years out of the spotlight, Teddy basks in the media attention Andy and Jane bring to his legendary song. Although O’Connell’s characters are thinly drawn and even predictable at times, they are also delightfully self-centered. Through her relationship with Teddy, Jane hopes to gain a lucrative client for her law firm and secure the coveted partnership. In turn, Teddy latches on to Jane for an image boost—Jane’s fresh-scrubbed appeal offers a welcome break from his past. Teddy hopes to distance himself from tabloid articles regaling his trips to rehab and his tawdry affairs. O’Connell is adept at exposing the manipulative nature of both the legal profession and the music industry. It’s decadent fun to see Teddy’s oleaginous agent create a media circus as Teddy and Jane rekindle their childhood relationship in full view of the paparazzi. The action is a bit sluggish until O’Connell tosses in the requisite plot twist, in the form of a love triangle. Just as Jane is becoming intoxicated with her taste of the rock-’n’-roll life, Drew Weston, a handsome lawyer, shows up at Jane’s firm to lend a hand on a million-dollar case and remind Jane of her true nature.
O’Connell makes this sweet treat go down smoothly thanks to snappy dialogue and evocative scenes of Chicago in the summer.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2005
ISBN: 0-451-21645-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.
The husband-and-wife team who have given us refreshing English versions of Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Chekhov now present their lucid translation of Tolstoy's panoramic tale of adultery and society: a masterwork that may well be the greatest realistic novel ever written. It's a beautifully structured fiction, which contrasts the aristocratic world of two prominent families with the ideal utopian one dreamed by earnest Konstantin Levin (a virtual self-portrait). The characters of the enchanting Anna (a descendant of Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Fontane's Effi Briest, and forerunner of countless later literary heroines), the lover (Vronsky) who proves worthy of her indiscretion, her bloodless husband Karenin and ingenuous epicurean brother Stiva, among many others, are quite literally unforgettable. Perhaps the greatest virtue of this splendid translation is the skill with which it distinguishes the accents of Anna's romantic egoism from the spare narrative clarity with which a vast spectrum of Russian life is vividly portrayed.
Pevear's informative introduction and numerous helpful explanatory notes help make this the essential Anna Karenina.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89478-8
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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