A smart, well-observed saga of lifestyle redemption that’s weighed down by an inert heroine.
A desperate housewife seeks to renew her spirit and her relationship with her family through a radical new diet in this tasty novel of recovery.
Thirty-something Chicago mom Colleen Adler drinks too much and struggles with a thyroid condition and constipation. She cedes the mothering of her two young daughters to the maid; frets that her husband, a lawyer, is having an affair; and suffers catty abuse from her mother-in-law, Dinah, the queen bee of the Harborview Country Club. Worst of all, in her view, she’s gained weight—she’s now 185 pounds—and she fears a social firing squad if she can’t fit into a svelte designer dress in time for Harborview’s Fourth of July gala. She repairs to weight-loss guru and all-around healer Kory Stone, whose ministrations include mirror work and talk therapy. Her central treatment, however, is a “detox diet” of sadistically healthy fare, prepared by a holistic chef—complete with kale, quinoa, yams, and seaweed. Colleen endures an agonizing week of caffeine-withdrawal headaches and doughnut cravings—but then she starts feeling lighter, regains her regularity, and perks up enough to read bedtime stories; soon, the bathroom scale noses downward. Then it’s time for deeper work, as Kory’s psychic friend Rachel helps Colleen communicate with her dead brother’s shade and reconnect with her parents, which requires her to confront their toxic home-cooked meals. Debut author Booker, a wellness coach, pokes entertaining fun at an appearance-obsessed culture of well-heeled women and vividly captures their sensuous battle with food. (Colleen “loved the soft snap of cold cheese as she bit down into the sweet tomato sauce” of leftover pizza.) Her countervailing depiction of New Age therapeutics sidesteps satire, though, and feels a bit too earnest. Booker’s prose is sharp and engaging, but Colleen is a weak protagonist; for much of the book, she’s a feckless person who relies on others for expectations and direction until extreme dieting finally rouses a little gumption in her. It’s a shrewd portrait of a dysfunctional personality, but sometimes Colleen is too dreary for readers to care about her.
A smart, well-observed saga of lifestyle redemption that’s weighed down by an inert heroine.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9998234-0-8
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Cricket Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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