A pellucid fourth novel from a newly emergent French writer whose previous three (including Hìtel Splendid) were published together in English last year. Like those predecessors, Redonnet's chilling rÇcit appears to offer provocative pointillist segments of an ongoing fictive autobiography. It presents the first-person thought-meanderings of Mia, a 30ish writer whose vacillating urges to follow up the success of her autobiographical first novel are interrupted by the slow decline of her beloved ``Ma,'' now confined to a nursing home, and her own passive drifting in and out of inchoate relationships with admiring and compliant men. In reechoing sequences of errands and encounters, presented with Beckett-like spareness and clarity, we observe Mia's dreamy sublimation in the lives of family, colleagues, and lovers whose vocations (many are, or wish to be, writers) and fates (they seem surrounded, if not also linked, by the looming presence of immanent death) gradually reveal themselves as aspects of her own experiences and her fears of experiences to come. Her own disgruntled immersion in financial and legal responsibilities, for example, mirrors her mother's disappointed ``apprentice[ship] to a seamstress at the age of twelve when she had wanted to be a dancer''; her own writer's block is mocked by the fate of her dying friend, a self-indulgent American traveler who will never complete the ``transcendent poem'' he has dreamed of writing. Thus Redonnet builds a compelling picture of a writer who lives in, and as, the people who possess her imagination. Redonnet's bare-boned prose rises frequently to the level of haunting lyricism (``I spent the whole night by Ma's bed watching her, as she had watched me when I was a little girl afraid of dying in my sleep''). This short, unpretentious book offers a full and fascinating revelation of a complex sensibility, and further confirms the arrival of a major artist still in the making.
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-8032-3915-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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