“What an awful, ghastly, wicked world,” says Susie. A hyperbolic one, too.
Here’s a Caribbean murder melodrama, written by a British historian who specializes in that area.
It’s the 1980s on an invented island, 20 years after it gained independence from the British; unfortunately, the island is so generic we might be on the moon. Chamberlain uses broad strokes to paint a majority black population and a white minority of former plantation owners and indentured laborers. Two women are her alternating narrators. Vanessa Francklyn's family has lived on the island for generations, and she has inherited a sugar plantation. Susie Howard is a British expatriate, an anthropology lecturer at the university (though we never see her on campus). In her mid-30s, Vanessa marries Cammy Turner, a white man who grew up poor but is now the richest man on the island thanks to his construction business. Susie has an affair with the Afro-Caribbean David Springer, poet, novelist and calypso singer, the eponymous Mighty Jester; his anti-establishment calypsos have won him a large following. David is married to Lucinda, an artist and rising star, whose patron and lover is Cammy Turner. This is way too schematic. It’s also troubling that the narrators' voices sound the same, though the women are polar opposites. Cammy turns into an abusive husband; Vanessa, a doormat wife. David is an attentive lover but low-key and passive, not protagonist material. Cammy is shot to death as a crime wave engulfs the island. There’s a big fat clue as to the killer’s identity, squelching the suspense. Still, we climb the “ladder of escalation.” David is scapegoated, arrested, tried in secret and sentenced to death. A frantic Susie flies to England and enlists legal help. Both narrators are now close to hysteria: Vanessa’s the victim of panic attacks, Susie’s the almost-victim of a strangler.
“What an awful, ghastly, wicked world,” says Susie. A hyperbolic one, too.Pub Date: June 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-615-94020-5
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Dr. Cicero Books
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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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