Bellows’s weight-obsessed heroine, whose lousy luck with men is somewhat balanced by her killer taste in shoes, will seem...
A successful single gal finds fulfillment and love only after she stops blaming herself for her twin brother’s autism.
Chick lit meets family melodrama in this debut from the Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic Kids. Even at the age of eight, Bella, funny, bright and obsessed with brides, is torn between duty and dreams. While her wish is to grow up and have her own wedding, she is haunted by a deep desire to “cure” her brother Bobby, who suffers from behavioral problems and seizures that are later determined to be the effects of Asperger’s Syndrome. In years to come, as Bobby struggles with shock treatments and institutionalization, Bella grows up to discover men, a humorous and heartbreaking succession of Mr. Wrongs. These range from the smooth-talking high-school stud who takes her virginity, to a soulful British artist who sketches her during a college semester at Oxford, to a charming alcoholic she is unable to change. Bella goes on to excel as a New York celebrity-magazine writer and even receives a pep talk from an iconic Oprah Winfrey, who urges the young journalist to let her “bright light” shine. But happiness eludes her, and after suffering on and off from depression, she learns that the only way she can hope for a lasting relationship is by reconciling herself to the feelings of guilt over the limited life of Bobby, who will always be the other man in her life. A collection of odd ticks and obsessions, Bobby expresses his feelings by mimicking cartoon voices, and prefers to eat his spaghetti with tweezers. He is a more interesting character than most of Bella’s suitors, and in spite of his inability to communicate in a traditional way with his own twin, it is he who ultimately teaches her about the complex nature of love.
Bellows’s weight-obsessed heroine, whose lousy luck with men is somewhat balanced by her killer taste in shoes, will seem overly familiar.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-451-21653-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is. King presents us with the riddle of a small Maine town that has been deserted overnight. Where did all the down-Easters go? Matter of fact, they're still there but they only get up at sundown. . . for a warm drink. . . .Ben Mears, a novelist, returns to Salem's Lot (pop. 1319), the hometown he hasn't seen since he was four years old, where he falls for a young painter who admires his books (what happens to her shouldn't happen to a Martian). Odd things are manifested. Someone rents the ghastly old Marsten mansion, closed since a horrible double murder-suicide in 1939; a dog is found impaled on a spiked fence; a healthy boy dies of anemia in one week and his brother vanishes. Ben displays tremendous calm considering that you're left to face a corpse that sits up after an autopsy and sinks its fangs into the coroner's neck. . . . Vampirism, necrophilia, et dreadful alia rather overplayed by the author of Carrie (1974).
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1975
ISBN: 0385007515
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
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