Flabby, often implausible plot propelled by original prose.
Four Dubliners regret misguided liaisons with a sadistic Irish politico.
Keyes (Anybody Out There, 2006, etc.) displays her trademark uncanny ability to wring humor from clichés in this story of four women whose paths cross with that of handsome Irish party hack Paddy de Courcy. Lola, whose narration hilariously parodies the article and pronoun-challenged diary of Bridget Jones, learns from the press that Paddy, her boyfriend, is engaged to Alicia, a horsey widow respectable enough to be a political helpmeet. Grace, a Dublin tabloid reporter, and her fraternal twin sister Marnie, met Paddy while all three were students working in a Dublin pub. Grace flirted briefly with Paddy before losing him to Marnie. But as his ambitions escalate, Paddy dumps Marnie, leaving her emotionally shell-shocked. Lola, fashion advisor to Dublin’s nouveau riche matrons, had found Paddy’s sexual proclivities increasingly problematic, but she’s so unsettled by his summary betrayal that she flees to a rustic seaside cabin in County Clare, where she becomes reluctant housemother to a growing contingent of transvestites. A brief fling with a surfer helps her weather Paddy’s rejection, but memories of how his kinky sexuality segued into “isolated” acts of physical abuse undermine her struggle to recover her sense of self-worth. Grace learns that Paddy may be behind the seemingly random torching of her sports car, but withholds her full history with him from the reader. She’s more preoccupied with trying to keep Marnie, who until recently lived happily in London with her commodities trader husband Nick and two daughters, from drinking herself to death. The weight of attention devoted to Marnie’s harrowing alcoholic free-fall deemphasizes and defuses the devastating impact of Paddy’s horrendous behavior. The gradual reveal of Paddy’s monstrosity toward the novels’ women, interspersed with the flip entertainment of Lola’s Bridget Jones-speak, generates a jarring unevenness of tone.
Flabby, often implausible plot propelled by original prose.Pub Date: June 17, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-112402-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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