Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the suburbs, Fielding turns up the heat again in this latest nightmarish Diary of a Mad Housewife. Kate Sinclair isn't really mad, of course, but she may be the only one in Palm Beach who isn't. The clients she sees every day for family therapy are troubled and confused, and some of them—like Donna Lokash, whose daughter Amy has been missing for over a year—are far worse. Kate's mother, it's painfully obvious, is sinking into Alzheimer's. Her teenaged daughter Sara may not be crazy, but her lying and smoking and sneaking around seem calculated to drive her mother mad. Kate's husband Larry, who ought to be helping support her through midlife hot flashes and polyps and cancer scares, is withdrawing into his golf game just when Kate's old boyfriend Robert Crowe has turned up again, clearly determined to consummate the romance he ended in high school when Kate wouldn't come across. But it's the flamboyant Jo-Lynn Baker, Kate's half-sister, who opens the gate to the real nightmare when she announces to Kate that she's in love with Colin Friendly, the smiling sociopath accused of killing 13 women. As in her earlier soccer-mom chillers (Don't Cry Now, 1995, etc.), Fielding cunningly plays on Kate's most homely fears and fantasies—she dreams of wild trysts with Robert, of a better sex life with Larry, of getting along with Sara without wanting to hit her—just at the point that they're shading into florid melodrama, so that when Kate wishes that she could be 17 again, you can see just how poignant and terrifying a Pandora's box that wish can be. Anybody who's ever been afraid of going gray or flabby, losing her looks or her husband, or rattling the skeletons in the family closet will be hopelessly hooked. (First printing of 175,000; Literary Guild selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 4, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-47821-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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