Passable tale of love and lies in a proper climate.
A complacent Englishwoman who has it all discovers a life of passion and subterfuge in middle age.
Apart from the inclusion of the British class system to add some extra weight, the story of Dilly, her husband Francis, and her lover Matthew is little different from the predictable pattern of late-life adultery. Dilly, an unwanted and unloved child of near-poverty (nits in her hair, no shoes for school) grows up to be a pretty, unambitious 19-year-old. She meets Francis Holmes in the art gallery where she works, and, as he’s buying a Hockney for his new office (he’s a lawyer), he asks Dilly out. Six months later she’s married, almost 30 years later she has two grown sons, grandchildren, a luxurious London house, and a husband who still adores her. What she doesn’t have is passion. Returning from the funeral of her best friend, Dilly meets Matthew, a bit younger, certainly scruffier, but seductive all the same. The two begin an affair, and then, dangerously, fall in love. Dilly lies to Francis, telling him she’s visiting her old aunt Eliza when instead she’s off with her lover. The lies compound, she arranges for Matthew to stay with her at her summer cottage, they hide behind bushes from prying eyes, and she promises that she’ll leave her husband. Much of the story is taken up with Dilly’s anguished guilt at being unfaithful to her loving and truly lovely husband and, in the face of Matthew’s passion, not caring. There are a few truly juicy subplots—Aunt Eliza’s memories of her marriage to a homosexual, and Dilly’s sister Virginia’s unbridled jealousy over her sister’s good fortune in life—though the main plot, the story of Dilly’s affair, too often drones on about undiscovered passion without offering much action to go with it.
Passable tale of love and lies in a proper climate.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-30782-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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