Colicchio passes up opportunities for comic or romantic relief, preferring to let his sad sacks wallow in their gloom. A...
A depressed old lady kills herself. Is her shrink to blame?
That’s the crux of this second novel, the slice-of-life successor to High Gate Health and Beauty, 2000 (not reviewed). The setting is blue-collar Jersey City, and the shrink is 40-year-old Nicky Finucche (rhymes with pooch). Nicky is a mess, and not just because he suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome. A nebbishy laughing-stock in school, he somehow finagled a degree in Counseling Psychology from a local college and turned his parents’ old butcher shop into a Mental Wellness Center. Because he’s “lazy as a slug,” he keeps minimal patient records. His diagnoses range from “asshole” to “a real nut.” Small wonder that he’s down to two patients: his buddy Mo and old Mrs. Hellman. Nicky has zero self-knowledge; otherwise, he’d have hung on to his former patient Lilly Giuliette: Deep down, he loves the upbeat meter maid, and she might have saved him from himself. As for Mrs. Hellman, her depression has been caused by a rotten husband (dead) and rotten son (Terry, married to Nicky’s sister Connie). Now, her depression is mutating into full-blown paranoia. Nicky’s impromptu therapy (worry balls, scented candles) doesn’t work, and Mrs. Hellman overdoses on sleeping pills. Terry, an angry, unemployed lowlife, has visions of a Wrongful Death suit, calling Nicky a charlatan, and his preening lawyer Arthur plays along. They’re right of course. Nicky is a quack. But in their dog-eat-dog world, Nicky has a saving grace they lack: simple kindness. Meanwhile, Connie, another depressed character, has quit her teaching job without telling Terry, who scares her to death. Under pressure from Terry and Arthur, Nicky regresses, coloring his wall-charts and having a good cry. But Connie, suddenly brave and resourceful, will save the day.
Colicchio passes up opportunities for comic or romantic relief, preferring to let his sad sacks wallow in their gloom. A disappointment.Pub Date: April 2, 2004
ISBN: 1-882593-85-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
A compulsively readable melodrama.
After her father’s sudden death, a daughter discovers disturbing facts about a sister presumed dead more than two decades earlier.
One way or another, Lisa MacPherson, a musical prodigy, has always dominated the lives of her family. By the age of 17, she's a violin virtuoso with a bright future. Unaccountably, on a winter morning, Lisa’s kayak (though not her body) is discovered in the ice-bound Potomac near the family’s Alexandria, Virginia, home. Shortly after the tragedy, the family moves to North Carolina. Lisa’s younger siblings, Danny, 7, and Riley, 2, will be told only that Lisa suffered from depression and committed suicide. Twenty-three years later, Riley, who has become a high school guidance counselor to help depressed teens like Lisa, is settling her father Frank’s affairs after his death from a heart attack. (Her mother had succumbed to cancer years before.) While getting ready to sell his North Carolina real estate—her childhood home and a trailer park—Riley runs across several people who harbor secrets about her family’s past: Danny, a mentally troubled Iraq War vet, nurses grudges against his parents while living as a virtual hermit on the outskirts of the trailer park. Her father’s friend Tom exhibits a threatening mien. Jeannie, another family friend, appears helpful, but what is she hiding? Riley discovers that her father was paying Tom off, but why? Early on, Lisa’s voice, and her version of events, emerges. We learn that she was accused of murdering her violin teacher and was about to stand trial. Her suicide was faked by her father and Tom, both ex-U.S. Marshals skilled at making people disappear. Her father relocated her to San Diego, where, ignoring Frank’s warnings to avoid music, she found new outlets for her extraordinary talent. Although the plot is not exactly watertight, the revelations are parceled out so skillfully that disbelief remains suspended until the satisfying if not entirely plausible close.
A compulsively readable melodrama.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-01071-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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