Only by skipping the plot and dialogue may Venice-lovers find kernels of pleasure in the physical/sensual description of the...
Emmy Award–winning actress Walker debuts as a novelist with this love letter to Venice, written in the guise of a romance about an American woman who takes a hiatus from her unhappy marriage.
Former actress Nel is touring Europe with her famous musician husband Antony. After an argument, Nel impulsively leaves him on a train and returns to Venice. Taking a walk, she saves a lost Chihuahua from hooligans. The dog belongs to the aging Signora da Isola, called Lucy by friends. Soon Nel has checked out of her hotel, The Gritti Palace, and moved in with Lucy, a gifted gardener who has lived in self-imposed isolation since her husband’s early death. Also staying in Lucy’s historic palazzo, a former convent, is the handsome Matteo, who is restoring a fresco discovered on one of the walls. Soon Lucy, Matteo and Nel stumble upon a connection between the convent and Giorgione, a brilliant 16th-century painter whose La Tempeste is considered a masterpiece to equal Bellini or da Vinci. A young woman’s letters are discovered, then the inevitable diary which describes Giorgione’s love affair with a high-born, young Venetian woman named Clara. A talented artist herself, Clara was raised by a wicked stepmother who tried to thwart her talent and her romance. But Clara, who painted the fresco while pregnant with Giorgione’s son, grabbed her brief shot at happiness before the Plague cut her and Giorgione’s lives short. While Nel and her new friends learn more about Clara and Giorgione, she is increasingly drawn into the sense of community evolving among the art historians and scholars who surround Lucy, in particular sensitive Matteo. Nel occasionally talks by phone to Antony without resolving their unspoken separation. Unfortunately, the novel’s conversations and interactions seldom ring true, and Nel, with her pretentious musings, is not likable or believable.
Only by skipping the plot and dialogue may Venice-lovers find kernels of pleasure in the physical/sensual description of the city’s history, art, food and architecture.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26706-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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