Animal-loving romantics will forgive the uneven tone.
The sequel to Singer’s Still Life with Elephant (2007) follows our heroine home from a year in Africa, only to discover that home may simply be where the elephants are.
After breaking up with Tom Pennington, the millionaire animal activist who won her heart in the first novel, Neelie spends a year at a reserve in Kenya nurturing baby elephants. As she readies to return to New York, political strife in Kenya changes everything. Stranded at the airport she meets safari guide Diamond-Rose Tremaine, who manages to get the two of them to Zimbabwe, where Neelie falls hopelessly in love with an elephant the camp calls Tusker. His bad behavior has him targeted for execution, and she becomes determined to save him. In exchange for $35,000 to a corrupt official, Neelie and Diamond have three months to find Tusker a safe haven. The two make it back to New York, but both feel the constriction of suburban America. Neelie misses the baby elephants, and Diamond can’t wash the bush out of her soul. She rarely bathes, eats most meals with her knife, answers questions with Swahili proverbs and prefers sleeping on the floor to the challenge of untangling sheets. At the New York animal sanctuary where Neelie and Diamond work, its founder Mrs. Wycliff is faltering from dementia (but the funny, charming kind!) and is now on permanent safari. Tom saves the place and Neelie is convinced he’s the only one who can save Tusker, but he refuses. Is it out of spite? What are his secret plans for the sanctuary? Will Tom and Neelie reunite? The novel’s finale ignites romance between Tom and Neelie and between Diamond and Jungle Johnny, a children's-show conservationist. All’s well that ends well, but for the odd chords the novel strikes—from slapstick comedy (including a cursing parrot), to the seriousness of animal poaching and corruption in Africa, to the fairly predictable romantic mix-ups between Tom and Neelie.
Animal-loving romantics will forgive the uneven tone.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-171377-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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