THE ARTIST’S WIFE

Name: THE ARTIST’S WIFE
Author: Max Phillips
ISBN: 0-8050-6670-5

by Max Phillips ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2001

Unlike his high-minded heroine, Phillips (Snakebite Sonnet, 1998) scrupulously avoids any worship at the shrine of art: the...

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An inventive, vividly written fictional autobiography of Alma Mahler (1879–1964).

The full-figured blond beauty of Fräulein Alma Schindler, daughter of a famous landscape painter, is much admired in Vienna’s musical and artistic circles. When partial deafness ends her plan to become an opera singer, she turns to composing, while also daydreaming about marrying “the way that you might stand above a ravine and imagine yourself falling.” She’s set her heart on an artist, provided she can find one who’s pure, brave, and manly enough to dominate her. Starting with painter Gustav Klimt—a talented peasant, but still a peasant, according to her outraged family—she trifles with one man after another, finally choosing composer/conductor Gustav Mahler. Jewish-born Catholic convert Mahler can’t resist this self-styled Aryan goddess of love, who nurtures his genius and inspires his greatest music. But after the birth of their first daughter, Maria, the role of muse begins to wear thin; soon pregnant again, Alma feels she’s turning into a doughty housekeeper. When Maria dies of diphtheria, the grieving family sets sail for America, where Mahler triumphs, then sickens of heart disease. Later, while taking the waters at an Austrian spa, the couple meets a young architect, Walter Gropius, who falls immediately in love with Alma. But he won’t marry her after the great man dies, and so she begins an affair with Czech expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka—a liaison that ends badly. Years afterward, she marries Gropius, by then busy inventing the Bauhaus movement. Moving right along, she eventually leaves him for another Jew who can’t resist her: popular Austrian author Franz Werfel. The two narrowly escape the Holocaust and wind up in Hollywood, along with other famous European ex-pats. Franz dies, and Alma lives on 20 years more, old and fat and ultimately disappointed, even by her own death.

Unlike his high-minded heroine, Phillips (Snakebite Sonnet, 1998) scrupulously avoids any worship at the shrine of art: the result, thankfully, is highly entertaining.

Pub Date: June 21, 2001

ISBN: 0-8050-6670-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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.