A busy plot, rendered in listless prose and populated by one-dimensional characters.
A middle-aged woman anticipates new freedom, only to have troubles land on her with a vengeance, in McFadden’s follow-up to The Richest Season (2008).
Claire, 45, is ready to get out of Jersey. She’s winding up 25 years of teaching, has taken up serious study of photography and is engaged to marry Rick, a golf-loving hedonist with an Arizona townhouse. Then Claire’s estranged daughter Amy, 23, returns home, her weight problem apparently worse than ever—until she gives birth just as her mother is about to leave for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: a career-making photography workshop in Cape Cod. Claire is now stuck with a resentful daughter, a newborn granddaughter, Rose, whose paternity Amy won’t discuss, and elderly parents who rely mostly on her, since out-of-state brother Eugene is too busy with his own career and family. Claire’s father Joe has Parkinson’s, and her mother Fanny, increasingly addled at 77, can’t cope. The workshop and the wedding must wait, but what is she going to do about John, the freelance writer who’s supposed to be renting her house while she’s in Provincetown? He finds another place, but he wants to use her photographs in an article on New Jersey’s abandoned canal system; working with John, Claire finds herself dangerously attracted. Then she gets another chance at the workshop, and with Amy, Rose and her parents (sprung from assisted living) in tow, Claire heads for Cape Cod. There, Joe tries to reconnect with a wartime love, Ava. Upset that Joe has never come clean with her about Ava, Fanny seeks solace in Buddhism and romance with local restaurateur Dominick. Provincetown also happens to be home base for John, who is working to publicize the plight of endangered whales and seals. The ever-escalating complications are fun, but this story of second chances smacks of middle-aged wish-fulfillment: There’s even a scene in which Rick and John fight over Claire.
A busy plot, rendered in listless prose and populated by one-dimensional characters.Pub Date: July 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4013-0148-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
A flawed but never dull drama.
A disadvantaged teen finds friendship, acceptance and love with a prosperous Seattle-area family, until a tragic accident changes everything.
Alexa (Lexi) Baill, daughter of a heroin addict, has bounced around the foster-care system for years. A long-lost great aunt, Eva, a Walmart employee, offers Lexi a home in her trailer across the bridge from Pine Island (Hannah’s fictional stand-in for Bainbridge Island) near Seattle. At Pine Island High School, Mia, daughter of Jude and Miles Farraday, and twin sister of Zachary, considers herself an outcast. She bonds instantly with the equally alienated Lexi. Soon, the Farraday’s opulent Pine Island residence is Lexi’s second home. As senior year approaches, Lexi and Zach fall in love and are relieved that Mia approves. Jude, whose days are a pleasant whirl of caring for her elaborate garden and being a supermom, has a strained relationship with her own mother. As seniors, Zach, Mia and Lexi can’t avoid Pine Island’s teen party scene. One foggy night, Zach and Mia get falling-down drunk, and Lexi, less inebriated, urges Zach to let her drive his Mustang home. (The question of who actually drove is left vague, which dodges several moral bullets, to the story’s detriment.) On a hairpin curve, the Mustang spins out and crashes. Mia is thrown from the backseat and killed. Zach and Lexi sustain milder injuries, but Lexi’s blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit, and she accepts the blame for killing Mia. Jude turns against her implacably. Lexi, unwilling to burden Eva with the expense of a trial, pleads guilty to vehicular homicide and serves over five years in prison. While incarcerated, she gives birth to Zach’s child, Grace, and relinquishes her to the Farradays. Grace bears such an uncanny resemblance to Mia that Jude finds it almost impossible to warm to her. Released from prison, Lexi returns to Pine Island, only to find that her daughter is as isolated and distrustful as any foster child.
A flawed but never dull drama.Pub Date: March 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-36442-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.
A heartland novel that evokes the possibility of everyday miracles.
The third novel by Wisconsin author Butler (Beneath the Bonfire, 2015, etc.) shows that he knows this terrain inside out, in terms of tone and theme as well as geography. Nothing much happens in this small town in western Wisconsin, not far from the river that serves as the border with Minnesota, which attracts some tourism in the summer but otherwise seems to exist outside of time. The seasons change, but any other changes are probably for the worse—local businesses can’t survive the competition of big-box stores, local kids move elsewhere when they grow up, local churches see their congregations dwindle. Sixty-five-year-old Lyle Hovde and his wife, Peg, have lived here all their lives; they were married in the same church where he was baptized and where he’s sure his funeral will be. His friends have been friends since boyhood; he had the same job at an appliance store where he fixed what they sold until the store closed. Then he retired, or semiretired, as he found a new routine as the only employee at an apple orchard, where the aging owners are less concerned with making money than with being good stewards of the Earth. The novel is like a favorite flannel shirt, relaxed and comfortable, well-crafted even as it deals with issues of life and death, faith and doubt that Lyle somehow takes in stride. He and Peg lost their only child when he was just a few months old, a tragedy which shook his faith even as he maintained his rituals. He and Peg subsequently adopted a baby daughter, Shiloh, through what might seem in retrospect like a miracle (it certainly didn’t seem to involve any of the complications and paperwork that adoptions typically involve). Shiloh was a rebellious child who left as soon as she could and has now returned home with her 5-year-old son, Isaac. Grandparenting gives Lyle another chance to experience what he missed with his own son, yet drama ensues when Shiloh falls for a charismatic evangelist who might be a cult leader (and he’s a stranger to these parts, so he can’t be much good). Though the plot builds toward a dramatic climax, it ends with more of a quiet epiphany.
The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-246971-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
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