Podgy prose, bland characters, dated story from this ever-popular husband-and-wife team (A Certain Smile, 1999, etc.).
Troubled family, endless complications.
Sara Elliot was always the perfect one: first-born, straight-A student, bound for medical school, etc. But she gave up her dream three years ago, at 24, when a stroke left her mother infirm and speechless and Sara devoted her life to caring for her adolescent sisters, Carrie and Abby, and ten-year-old brother Doug, meanwhile sticking with her own thankless job of finding luxury housing for loudmouthed rich people who dress badly and condescend to her. Yet, selfless to a fault, Sara never complains, says anything rude or funny, or even asks the burning question that every put-upon soap-opera heroine must ask: When will it be my turn? Maybe never. Mack, her manic, self-absorbed, younger brother is back in town. Perhaps Sara will be forced to confront the flaws in his volatile character—once she gets a nutritious dinner on the table, coaxes her sibs to eat their vegetables and do their homework, and offers moral guidance, fresh bread, and words of wisdom to all. Yet a romantic heart still beats faintly in the steel bosom of this annoying female robot: Reuben, a handsome, rich, also perfect client, seems to be single. But, wait! Is that a vengeful, money-hungry wife in his closet, claiming that Reuben’s bestial sexual demands forced her to have abortions? Sara would cry, if she weren’t a robot. The march of the subplots begins (cue the mighty Wurlitzer). Mack throws a tantrum in the nursing home where his addled mother languishes and explains why he’s so messed up before his dreams of glory make him easy prey for a cigar-chomping, casino-building monster, another of Sara’s clients. Reuben’s wife decides to accept a few zillion dollars, thus freeing Reuben to buy a cool, minimalist loft in New York. But it’s not a real home, Sara frets . . . . Happy ending, rife with platitudes, and it’s a wrap.
Podgy prose, bland characters, dated story from this ever-popular husband-and-wife team (A Certain Smile, 1999, etc.).Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059929-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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