Redemption Lite.
Searching for the husband who disappeared on the eve of their 25th wedding anniversary, an obese woman changes her life.
The mystery in Lansens’s follow-up to The Girls (2006) is not why long-suffering Gooch left but what took him so long. Four-hundred-pound Mary has pushed him away for years, distrusting and refusing every gesture of affection. She has been under the sway of what she calls “the obeast” since childhood; she and Gooch fell in love as seniors in high school, after a parasitic infection caused a sudden weight loss. A gifted writer, Gooch gave up his college dreams to marry Mary when she became pregnant. But she miscarried before the wedding, her weight returned, and it increased even more once she learned she could not have children. For years Gooch has tried to interest Mary in the larger world, or in himself, but her only passion has been food. He goes missing after depositing $25,000 from a scratch-and-win lottery game into their joint checking account. Devastated, she is finally galvanized to leave their small Ontario hometown to look for him. Serendipitous events follow. Restaurant receipts lead her to Toronto, where she finds Gooch’s long-lost sister, who says he’s headed to see his estranged mother in Golden Hills, Calif. On the curb outside LAX, a kindly limo driver picks up Mary and arranges a salon makeover before dropping her at her mother-in-law’s house. Gooch isn’t there, but while waiting for him in California Mary befriends a divorcee with triplets and a hunky Mexican-American gardener. She warms to Gooch’s prickly mother, whose revelations force Mary to reexamine her marriage. Meanwhile, she loses her appetite. By the time she accepts that Gooch may not return, she is svelte and eating only for the right reasons. Readers will still be hungry: While Mary’s evolution is all too predictable, Lansens never adequately explains the more enigmatic, sympathetic Gooch.
Redemption Lite.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-06931-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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