This kind of import is definitely an acquired taste.
First novel about two Londoners sabotaging the wedding of a social-climbing chum.
Melanie Pepper and her best friend Fran are miffed beyond belief when Amanda Phillips manages to get engaged to Scottish laird Fraser McConnell. Isn’t it enough that Amanda is petite, perky, blond, and rich? Melanie and Fran were sure all the Right Hons were taken—or gay. Granted, Amanda’s intended dresses shabbily, and his ancestral castle is a pile of rubble, but his title is real enough, and they remember Fraser from their school days as really rather nice in his odd way. Melanie and Fran know that Amanda’s only marrying him for his noble pedigree and a chance to get her picture in the papers, but there’s nothing they can do about it but sulk and drink and scheme. Though she’d like to save Fraser, Melanie has too many other men in her life to worry about: Alex, her ne’er-do-well boyfriend, who dreams of making it big in rock music; and Nick, a hapless accountant who warms her bed when Alex isn’t around. Then Amanda sniffily informs her two friends that they’re not quite what she has in mind for bridesmaids—although, of course, they can attend the pretentious ceremony and contribute a silver place setting or two. Fueled by gallons of alcohol and limitless spite, Melanie and Fran hatch a plot and enlist Fraser’s younger brother, Angus, to help plant smoke bombs at the church and ruin the wedding. The ensuing stampede propels Fraser into loving arms, right where he apparently belongs. Colgan has a lively style, but this malicious little love story is awfully British and awfully brittle: all the girlish shrieking, tacky sex jokes, and class snobbery wear thin in a hurry.
This kind of import is definitely an acquired taste. (Film rights to Warner Bros.)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-446-52647-9
Page Count: 278
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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