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TWO HARBORS

Name: TWO HARBORS
Author: Kate Benson
ISBN: 0-15-603124-8

by Kate Benson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2005

Moments of fine observation amid bewildering disequilibrium.

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A contrived debut about an emotionally confounded young woman trying to find her mother.

Casey Maywood’s mother, a former Winter Queen, always wanted to be a movie star—more than she wanted to be a mom, apparently, because in 1995 she abandoned her young daughter and husband in Two Harbors, Minn., and ran off to Hollywood, leaving barely a trace. The scandal surrounding mom’s abandonment damaged Casey’s relationship with her passive father. By the time Casey is 19, a film student and fledgling actress, it’s time to find some answers about her mysterious, mentally unstable mother, who taught her daughter to act the part of the lover without ever allowing herself to fall in love. Too late for Casey, who has just met the new guy in town, Dex Stone, from L.A., at the screening of an indie film called Two Harbors. The lovers only have a few months together before Dex is killed on a return flight to Duluth from L.A.; and when Dex’s younger brother, Kevin, asks Casey to come out to the funeral in Hollywood, she accepts, thinking this a perfect opportunity to hunt for her lost mother. The plotting grows increasingly far-fetched as the novel melds into the Two Harbors film, involving the brothers’ Gatsby-esque father and his actress girlfriend, whom both sons seemed to have shared. Casey comes up with some clues to her mother’s disappearance at a strip club, plausible enough until Benson forcefully ties the whole charade up in an incredible knot. The rich, entitled brothers have few distinguishing characteristics, while Casey is a vulnerable, dreamy, sad character whose mother seems to have robbed her of a true identity: “Aren’t we all just actors looking for the same break?” one character asks of Casey.

Moments of fine observation amid bewildering disequilibrium.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-15-603124-8

Page Count: 312

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.