A disappointing follow-up to Koen's much hoopla'd debut, Through a Glass Darkly (1986). Here, the historical detail weighs down and muddles far more than it enriches. Beautiful Barbara Montgeoffry, otherwise known as widowed Countess Devane, is back, and this time she's taking America by storm. Set in the 1720s, this complicated blend of fact and fancy has Barbara, with longtime servants ThÇräse and Hyacinthe, land in colonial Virginia, where she's been sent to assess her grandmother's newly acquired tobacco plantation—and to escape unwanted suitors at home. Though still in mourning-black, the irrepressible countess wastes no time in lining up other admirers, including wise and elderly Colonel Perry and the dashing sea captain Klaus von Rothbach. While Barbara (now 20) is duly horrified by the rustic conditions of her temporary homeland, the evils of slavery, and the difficulty of running a working plantation, all is not well at home, where a Jacobite plot wreaks havoc on the House of Hanover and on the loved ones (and not so loved) she's left behind: her grandmother, the Duchess of Tamworth; a best friend and mother of three, Jane Cromwell; favorite cousin and former suitor Tony; and conniving mother Diana, who's started an affair with Charles, Barbara's own lover before she set sail for the New World. After much strife, Barbara finally returns to England, quickly becomes again the toast of the town (and of the king), then is forced to deal head-on with mixed loyalties and a potentially destructive affair with Laurence Slane, a spy for James III and a major player in the fight to put him on the throne. Koen's two storylines—Barbara's life in Virginia and the political upheaval in England—don't mesh well, while her heroine remains unconvincingly high-spirited throughout. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-394-56929-6
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.
A supposedly recovering alcoholic real estate agent tells her not-exactly-trustworthy version of life in her small New England town in this tragicomic novel by Leary (Outtakes from a Marriage, 2008, etc.).
Sixty-year-old Hildy Good, a divorced realtor who has lived all her life in Wendover on the Massachusetts North Shore, proudly points to having an ancestor burned at the stake at the Salem witch trials. In fact, her party trick is to do psychic readings using subtle suggestions and observational skills honed by selling homes. At first, the novel seems to center on Hildy’s insights about her Wendover neighbors, particularly her recent client Rebecca McAllister, a high-strung young woman who has moved into a local mansion with her businessman husband and two adopted sons. Hildy witnesses Rebecca having trouble fitting in with other mothers, visiting the local psychiatrist Peter Newbold, who rents an office above Hildy’s, and winning a local horse show on her expensive new mount. Hildy is acerbically funny and insightful about her neighbors; many, like her, are from old families whose wealth has evaporated. She becomes Rebecca’s confidante about the affair Rebecca is having with Peter, whom Hildy helped baby-sit when he was a lonely child. She helps another family who needs to sell their house to afford schooling for their special needs child. She begins an affair with local handyman Frankie Getchell, with whom she had a torrid romance as a teenager. But Hildy, who has recently spent a stint in rehab and joined AA after an intervention by her grown daughters, is not quite the jolly eccentric she appears. There are those glasses of wine she drinks alone at night, those morning headaches and memory lapses that are increasing in frequency. As both Rebecca’s and Hildy’s lives spin out of control, the tone darkens until it approaches tragedy. Throughout, Hildy is original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy.
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-01554-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
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