More literate and entertaining soap from the author of The Italian Garden (1993), etc., this time in a fifth novel set in the British fenlands east of Cambridge. When Lady Gwendoline Blythe returns home to her country estate in Drakesden, she discovers her teenaged children, Nicholas and his younger sister, Lally, consorting with Thomasine Thorne, the orphaned daughter of missionaries, and Daniel Gillory, the blacksmith's son. Furious, Lady Blythe sets off events that will alter all of their lives—and, of course, since it's the summer of 1914, that favored time for British romance writers, the war will make alterations of its own. Fifteen-year-old Daniel is denied an education, runs off to London, enlists, and is wounded; Nicholas mutilates himself after seeing the rest of his company slaughtered, then, shell-shocked, returns to England; Thomasine, the feisty redhaired heroine here, becomes a dancer; and Lally, who had further incensed her mother by stealing a family heirloom, is sent to boarding school, where she'll eventually contract TB. After the war, Thomasine, pregnant and abandoned, marries Nicholas in Paris. Daniel marries a woman named Fay and moves her to his small farm in Drakesden, and Lally sleeps around. Daniel warns Nicholas that the Drakesden dikes are in danger of breaking—a foreshadowing of the end—while it's also clear that after much teeth gnashing Daniel and Thomasine will get together, since they've married the worst possible people. Meanwhile, Nicholas won't make love to Thomasine and cuts himself with razor blades; Fay hates the fens; and after the flood, Daniel and Thomasine build a home on the high ground, and are ready to survive the rest of the 20th century. Loose ends are rushed to a resolution here, but, once again, Lennox animates accurate historical detail with an inventive imagination and a strong attention to place.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13166-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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