by Maxence Fermine & translated by Chris Mulhern ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2003
Silly and sugary stuff. Could better have been packaged as a greeting card of one kind or another.
The French author’s second to appear here (after Snow, 2003), said to be a success in Europe, is a small little tidbit of Hallmarkiana about a musician who lives—and dies—during the Napoleonic era.
Johannes Karelsky, born in 1764, becomes a violinist at age five, after hearing a traveling gypsy’s performance. A child prodigy, two years later he begins performing, soon doing so in all the European courts, acclaimed as “a great violinist, because the music he played came not from his hands but from his heart.” Well, maybe so. Things begin to pale, though, his career stalls, he ages, and, at 31, in 1796, he gets called up for military duty and finds himself a part of Napoleon’s Italian campaign. Desperately wounded on the battlefield and left to die, he’s visited by a mysterious woman—real or imaginary we’ll never know—who gives him water and then sings to him though the night. Could this fateful encounter (he survives!) be an omen in some way related to his driving lifelong desire to compose “the most beautiful opera ever written”? Gee, maybe so. Because he’s been so badly wounded, Johannes is left behind in Venice on desk duty when the rest of the army moves northward—and he’s billeted in the house of one Erasmus, a man without a family who’s a maker of—yes—violins! (“My real homeland is music,” says Erasmus. “I don’t care that much about the rest”). Will Johannes reveal to Erasmus that he himself is a great violinist? (Yes.) Will he have other semi-mystical experiences regarding music, his opera, and the mysterious black violin that hangs on the wall of Erasmus’s workshop? (Yes, yes, and yes.) Will he—gasp—actually compose his brilliant opera? Well, we’re not telling. Read and find out for yourself (it won’t take long).
Silly and sugary stuff. Could better have been packaged as a greeting card of one kind or another.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-5685-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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by Maxence Fermine & translated by Chris Mulhern
by Nora Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 1995
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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by Nora Roberts
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by Nora Roberts
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by Nora Roberts
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
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
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