At 500-plus pages, more panorama then drama.
Sequel to the much darker Crazy Ladies (1990), West’s fourth is a marathon romp through Southern froth.
After leaping from the roof of husband Albert’s dime-store, Dorothy Hamilton McDougal weathers confinement in an asylum and electroshock by corresponding with First Ladies. Daughter Bitsy clobbers husband Claude with a package of frozen baby backribs (he tried to drown her in a slow-draining sink), then flees to the Gulf Coast with baby Jennifer. Dorothy’s sister, Clancy Jane, holds down the ancestral abode at 214 Dixie in Crystal Falls, Tenn. A former hippie, Clancy is married to physician Byron. Next door in Dorothy’s brick house, son Mack, a Vietnam vet and amputee, lives in redneck bliss with Earlene. From 1972 to 1994, the Hamilton/MacDougal women strive in vain to escape their collective destiny: bumbling and/or skirt-chasing men. Parental favoritism and sibling distrust, traceable to redoubtable ancestor Miss Gussie, continue. Robbed of custody by Claude’s snooty family, Bitsy nevertheless becomes an off-and-on babysitter for Jennifer. Dorothy returns from the funny farm with shocked-white hair and eyebrows singed bare. Albert has divorced her and married a cashier from the store. Clancy starts a gourmet café, then moves to a remote mountain house. She replaces Byron, driven off by her Buddhist scorched-earth school of interior décor, with proliferating cats. Along the way, her daughter, Violet, becomes a psychiatrist and enjoys the story’s only stable marriage. After an aborted engagement to a dentist, whose flagrantly awful family mires him forever, Bitsy acquires polish as the wife of New Orleans star cardiologist Louie. But his incorrigible yen for nubile nurses eventually compels her to flee to London, where she finally finds a trustworthy male. A wedding scene, in which Jennifer narrowly misses succumbing to the Wentworth syndrome of enabling ne’er-do-well husbands, brings the bloodlines and plotlines together in clichéd celebration of family craziness.
At 500-plus pages, more panorama then drama.Pub Date: July 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-018406-X
Page Count: 544
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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