Morris has all the tools. But they need sharpening, and better raw material.
A sprawling fifth outing from Oprah favorite Morris (Songs in Ordinary Time, 1995).
After serving 25 years for murder, 40-ish misfit Gordon Loomis—physically huge, emotionally withdrawn, and stunned by despairing guilt—is released from prison and returns to his Massachusetts hometown under the watchful eye and judgmental presence of his younger brother Dennis: a successful medical professional who has painstakingly distanced himself and his family from the stigma created by Gordon’s accidental smothering of a pregnant neighbor whose house he and another teenager had broken into. Morris’s eye for gritty detail and gift for springing successive narrative traps function almost perfectly in the opening chapters, which vividly render Gordon’s unease with family, co-workers (at the rundown market where he’s a bag boy), and neighbors—notably, foulmouthed adolescent Jada Fossum, who runs drugs to mollify a local dealer harassing her junkie mother, and Delores Dufault, Gordon’s former schoolmate and stubbornly devoted supporter, whose earnest offers of a new life with her constitute a bridge he cannot bring himself to cross. The juxtapositions of Gordon’s timidity with the encircling neighborhood world that keeps drawing him in reveal with poignant irony how his very selflessness and integrity keep getting him into trouble. A crush on a woman who’s beyond him ended, a vitriolic elderly neighbor’s hold over him broken, Gordon perseveres, gets his dream job—and then Morris drops the hammer. In its best pages this is a raw, painful story that carries a powerful emotional charge. But it’s marred by strident overplotting (a new crisis develops every few pages) and unconvincing characterizations, especially that of feral, street-smart Jada, who is, paradoxically, sentimentalized as cloyingly as your generic Dickensian waif. What Morris does with Delores and Gordon is infinitely truer and more moving—until a final-chapter resolution that’s almost insultingly phony.
Morris has all the tools. But they need sharpening, and better raw material.Pub Date: March 8, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03288-3
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
A funny, frank, and refreshingly mature take on the familiar will-they-or-won’t-they romance template.
A college hockey player finds his vow of celibacy tested when he meets the campus beauty.
This final installment of Kennedy’s (Bad Apple, 2018, etc.) Briar U trilogy focuses on a supporting character from the earlier volumes: hockey star Hunter Davenport. He’s so bitterly disappointed that Briar’s hockey team “didn’t make it to the national championship” that he’s decided to take a vow of sexual abstinence until the end of the season. It’s tough on him (“I take out all my sexual frustration on the ice,” he thinks, but readers won’t believe him). And his pledge doesn’t stop him from appreciating all the lovely women at campus parties. But in a psychology class, he meets smart, gorgeous Demi Davis. Demi immediately notices how handsome he is (“too attractive for his own good”), and soon she and Hunter are paired in a psychology experiment in which she plays the doctor and he the patient. In short order, strong sexual tension builds between the two. Hunter doggedly maintains his “monk” status even as the chemistry between them heats up. Demi admires his stunning looks and is amused by his quick wit (When setting up their next class meeting, he texts her: “Make sure you’re wearing tight spandex pants so I can objectify you”). But she has mixed feelings about Hunter (“He is either the best or the worst. I still haven’t decided”). Kennedy unfolds the story with smooth confidence and a great deal of sure-footed humor. The book’s whole supporting cast is well developed. And both Hunter and Demi are sparkling, enjoyable fictional creations, often unpredictable but also entirely believable, dealing with each other in the sexually frank manner that characterizes notable contemporary romance titles. Hunter’s resolve about his love life feels overdone in the novel’s final third, but the author’s prose is so energetic that only the pickiest readers will find it distractingly unrealistic— in fact, they may love the character all the more for it.
A funny, frank, and refreshingly mature take on the familiar will-they-or-won’t-they romance template.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9995497-6-3
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Elle Kennedy Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
SEEN & HEARD
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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