Not action-packed, but an intriguing journey through the metaphors of a modern illness—and certainly written with intensive...
A ruminative story of illness and healing that Schwartz (Leaving Brooklyn, 1989; Disturbances in the Field, 1983, etc.) makes as deep as a fever dream—with that same fitfulness and moments of heightened clarity.
When Laura, a 40-year-old writer who lives in New York, begins to experience headaches, sore throats, and a dizzying exhaustion, she's not convinced that she really has an illness. She suspects it may just be some form of reaction to the facts of her life— including the death of her reporter husband, who was caught in the crossfire of a drug raid two years earlier, and her on-again, off- again lover, ``Q,'' who manages to turn up in her life each time she thinks she's ready to go on without him. When Laura finally visits a doctor, she learns it actually is an illness that has downed her, a form of chronic fatigue virus, for which the doctor can offer no prescription beyond ``get plenty of rest.'' Rest she does, in her own restless way, seeking help from an acupuncturist and a tai chi teacher, taking a vacation with her stepdaughter, and, most of all, sorting through the scenes of her life until they form a picture she can understand and make peace with. That's when her recovery really begins. It's not a new idea that the healing process is actually a process of self-discovery, but Schwartz manages to make Laura's story all her own in its honesty, complexity, and finely drawn cast of characters: Even her low-key paean to alternative medicine comes off as something much more interesting than the New Age trendiness it might suggest.
Not action-packed, but an intriguing journey through the metaphors of a modern illness—and certainly written with intensive care. (Literary Guild alternate selection)Pub Date: June 5, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80247-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
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