Kennedy’s (See Mommy Run, 2012) coming-of-age story follows Brooke, a teenage girl struggling to divide her life among her friends, her family, her love interests and an unexpected controlling force.
When both car and cellphone break down, leaving Brooke stranded in a tropical storm, she seeks shelter in what she believes is the house of her mom’s friend. Instead, she’s invited into the home of frail and flamboyant Laura de France, a dizzyingly complex character who is never fully fleshed out. Dialogue flows naturally between the pair; in fact, realistic conversations become the book’s highlight. Claiming to be a 1950s actress who worked alongside the best in the business, Miss de France offers Brooke the opportunity to wear one of Elizabeth Taylor’s dresses to a Valentine’s Day ball. Brooke spends the next eight chapters obsessing over the dress in most of her internal thoughts, though her yearning for the garment is never cultivated into a believable motivation; she “wanted to look really hot for [her boyfriend, Tyler] at Paige’s party [and] to get even with Paige,” the girl with whom her boyfriend had cheated on her. Undercut by such flimsy decisions, Brooke doesn’t grow much, making her somewhat difficult to sympathize with. At the party, one of Brooke’s friends, a film enthusiast, exposes Miss de France as a fraud—she’s not a real actress; the stress from the accusation causes Miss de France to suffer a heart attack. Consumed by guilt from her friend’s accusation, Brooke succumbs to Miss de France’s delicate condition and allows herself to become Miss de France’s “slave.” As Miss de France dominates the girl’s life, Brooke’s world begins to spin out of control: Miss de France has a sudden, fantastical ambition for Brooke to be a movie star; her friends are exasperated with being neglected; and she has a host of new romantic interests. With multiple engaging plot twists, the basics of a strong story are here, but the rather flat main characters merely react to events instead of using their evolving personalities.
More character depth would help fill out this story about a young woman finding herself.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1612357966
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Melange Books
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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