An endearing tale of coping with loss.
Two women find joy as they endure the hardships of aging.
Ward’s (Girl Under Construction, 2013) bittersweet novel begins dramatically: The husband of Stel, an active senior, unexpectedly dies. Blindsided by grief, she wonders what she will do with “Act Three” of her life. Determined to not become a burden for her daughter, Stel sells her house and moves to Singing Pines, a residence for independent seniors. Her longtime friend Merci is also a widow. Despite declining health, Merci is desperately determined to live at home. Told through first-person letters the two friends write to each other, this breezy read is often lighthearted but sometimes deeply poignant. Faced with difficult choices, the women must learn to adapt to change. Once at Singing Pines, energetic Stel is disappointed by the many gray heads and walkers she sees. And instead of an exciting community, she’s dismayed to find intrusive rules—she has to push a red button every morning to let the staff know she’s OK. Meanwhile, Merci argues with her daughter, who wants her to move in with her. The characterization in Ward’s drama is strong, and Stel and Merci are likable, realistic women. Although the story is full of quips—Merci calls her breasts “the hanging baskets”—the protagonists are not stereotypical little old ladies. For example, Stel astutely observes after she begins tutoring children: “I might have gone for hours of counseling with psychiatrists and therapists to discover what was missing from my life, when all along it was connection with the circle of life.” The two women blow off steam about daughters, but there are sympathetic glimpses of the younger “sandwich” generation: Merci’s daughter is trying to raise a family while worrying about mom falling down at home alone. Offering a ray of hope (the two pals begin writing a guide for seniors), moments of sadness (Merci deals with grief), and plenty of laughs (Merci wears a lampshade to a library’s Storytime), Ward tenderly paints an honest portrait of the ups and downs of aging.
An endearing tale of coping with loss.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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