Gourmet cooking, the television industry, private-school troubles, and one of NYC's last eligible bachelors amply furnish the life of Caroline Sindler in this warm, if disappointingly anticlimactic entertainment by Rossner (His Little Women, 1991, etc.). The youngest child of a New York Jewish academic family, Caroline takes after the family's Italian housekeeper, a passionate cook, rather than, say, Gertrude Stein. Bored by college, Caroline spends a summer as an au pair in Italy, where she gets pregnant by- -and consequently married to—Angelo Ferrante, a Sicilian ladies' man. At least she can cook in the restaurant where he tends bar. Predictably, once the couple move to Rome to operate a restaurant of their own, Angelo returns to his stable of mistresses while Caroline slaves in the kitchen and tries to care for their daughter, Olivia. The restaurant succeeds, but the marriage doesn't; Caroline says good-bye to 12-year-old Olivia (who refuses to leave her father) and retreats, traumatized, to her parents' Westport, Conn., home. Two years later, just as Caroline has recovered enough to start holding cooking classes in her Manhattan loft, Olivia reappears, claiming that her father has recently married a monster and begging to live with her mother instead. Caroline has good reasons for optimism: Her precious daughter is coming home, prospects are brewing for a cable TV cooking show, and the Jewish doctor upstairs is showing romantic interest. But she hasn't reckoned on spoiled teenaged Olivia's furious accusations and desire for revenge, which demands that several lives be shattered before mother and daughter can forget and forgive. The climax builds, fueled by Olivia's anger and Caroline's guilt—but in the end, this competent chef solves all her troubles so neatly and easily that one wonders what the fuss was about. Until then, though, engrossing characters and entertaining riffs on the importance of traditional meals keep the pages turning. (Literary Guild main selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59720-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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