A gripping, lyrical journey into one woman’s turning point in a life half lived.
A middle-aged married woman meets a photographer at a gallery opening and enters into an erotic affair, leading her to consider her current life and the moments in her past that led her to where she is.
Elisabeth works at her best friend’s art gallery, and openings are an everyday part of her life. Everything changes, however, when she meets photographer Will at the opening of his show. Before too long, they’re involved in a passionate affair. Elisabeth is bored and unfulfilled in her marriage, and Will adds intensity and sensuality to her life. But he isn’t relationship material, whereas Ross, her husband, may be disappointing, but he's steady, and leaving him would completely upend a comfortable life. Meanwhile, Elisabeth’s twin daughters are just graduating from college and beginning their own “real lives,” complete with fiances, wedding planning and professional anxieties. And her closest friends are going through life challenges. All of these events make Elisabeth contemplate her own choices and wonder what might have been. Or what could be. At the simplest level, this book is about a woman having a midlife crisis, being tempted by a sexy artist and revisiting some of the odd events of her life. However, Hart’s beautiful use of language and discerning eye toward human experience elevate the book to a poignant reflection on the deepest yearnings of the human heart and the seductive temptation of passion in its many forms. Erotic, with elegant yet graphic descriptions of sex, the book explores one woman’s dissatisfaction with her life and her ambivalence toward past and current choices. The storytelling is smooth, the characters textured and the plot compelling—though the use of first person, present tense at times seems to create an odd narrative distance, given the intimate subject matter.
A gripping, lyrical journey into one woman’s turning point in a life half lived.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1477-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harlequin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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