by Marina Lewycka ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2005
Not enough here to reinvigorate an old, old story.
Ancient widower weds gold digger; daughters intervene; goodbye, gold-digger.
The old man who makes a fool of himself over a younger woman is a staple of the human comedy, and, in Lewycka’s first novel, the old man lives in England, an immigrant from Ukraine like the author herself. Kolya Mayovskyj is an octogenarian, a retired engineer with a love of poetry, philosophy and tractors. His wife, Ludmilla, has been dead two years when he meets another Ukrainian, 36-year-old Valentina, and is enchanted by her winning ways and massive boobs. Valentina needs the right papers for herself and her teenaged son Stanislav, and as much of Kolya’s money as she can get her hands on. The story is narrated by Nadia, one of Kolya’s two daughters, a university lecturer with an English husband and child, though we learn little about them. The focus is on her father, the book he’s writing (see title), his past in the old country, and her relationship with her sister Vera, ten years older. The sisters haven’t spoken since a disagreement over their mother’s will, but the common enemy Valentina draws them back together. Their rapprochement is strengthened once Nadia learns their family’s darkest secret (the fight for survival, before she was born, in a German labor camp). Now the sisters contact lawyers and immigration authorities. Their father’s marriage soon turns sour, and the frail Kolya’s adoration of Valentina turns to fear as the promiscuous predator physically abuses him. Not that Kolya is unduly sympathetic himself, as flashbacks show him responsible for his mother-in-law’s death back in Ukraine. He eventually agrees to a divorce, and another go-round of hearings and appeals yields little drama or comedy, even with the extra fillip of Valentina’s pregnancy (Kolya decidedly not the father). The deus ex machina is Valentina’s former husband, newly arrived from Ukraine.
Not enough here to reinvigorate an old, old story.Pub Date: March 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-59420-044-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
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by Lisa Jackson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2013
You’ll need your own detective’s notebook to keep tabs on all the characters and connections on display here. Even so,...
A tenacious reporter won’t let personal ties to a decades-old case stop her from finding the truth.
On the advice of her agent, Savannah Sentinel reporter and author Nikki Gillette is looking for fodder for her latest true-crime novel when she realizes that the perfect subject is about to be released from prison. Savannah’s notorious Blondell O’Henry has been locked up for some 20 years for the murder of her oldest daughter and Nikki’s childhood friend, Amity. Now that Blondell’s son Niall has recanted the testimony that put her away all those years ago, it looks as if she’ll be a free woman unless Nikki’s fiance, Detective Pierce Reed, can find a reason to keep her detained. Pierce and Nikki both work to discover what happened years ago at that cabin in the woods, though Pierce bridles at Nikki’s rather unconventional—all right, illegal—research methods. It seems to Nikki that the more she investigates, the more connections she discovers to her own family, beginning with the fact that her Uncle Alex was the original defense attorney on the case. But all of these uncomfortable connections make Nikki still more determined to learn the truth, even if she doesn’t like what that may mean.
You’ll need your own detective’s notebook to keep tabs on all the characters and connections on display here. Even so, Jackson (You Don’t Want to Know, 2012, etc.) shows a mastery of the true-crime thriller formula that will please fans.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5858-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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by Taylor Jenkins Reid ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2014
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a...
An unhappily married couple spends a year apart in Reid’s (Forever, Interrupted, 2013) novel about second chances.
When we meet Lauren, she and her husband, Ryan, are having a meltdown trying to find their car in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium after a game. Through a series of flashbacks, Lauren reveals how the two of them went from being inseparable to being insufferable in each other’s eyes—and in desperate need of a break. Both their courtship and their fights seem so ordinary—they met in college; he doesn’t like Greek food—that the most heartbreaking part of their pending separation is deciding who will get custody of their good-natured dog. It’s not until Ryan moves out that the juicy details emerge. Lauren surreptitiously logs into his email one day, in a fit of missing him, and discovers a bunch of emails to her that he had saved but not sent. Liberated by Ryan’s candor, Lauren saves her replies for him to find, and the two of them read each other’s unfiltered thoughts as they go about their separate lives. Neither character holds anything back, which makes the healing process more complex, and more compelling, than simply getting revenge or getting one’s groove back. Meanwhile, as Lauren spends more time with her family and friends, she explores the example set for her by her parents and learns that there are many ways to be happy. It’s never clear until the final pages whether living alone will bring Lauren and Ryan back together or force them apart forever. But when the year is up, the resolution is neither sappy nor cynical; it’s arrived at after an honest assessment of what each partner can’t live with and can’t live without.
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a committed relationship.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1284-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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