Slick and quick.
Britisher Gayle (My Legendary Girlfriend, 2002) bowls another one down the lad-lit lane with this slight and lighthearted riff on fatherhood.
Dave, the Trinidadian music critic for Louder, “the magazine for people who live music,” and Izzy, his Anglo-Welsh-Polish wife, the deputy editor of the glossy women’s magazine Femme, are “poster children for the twin-income no-kids generation”—until the evening they set out to disprove an article Izzy has just edited on the decline in sexual activity among thirtysomething couples. Within weeks, the two are awaiting the results of a home pregnancy test. Dave finds himself more excited than Izzy about pending parenthood, and he writes a syrupy letter that begins, “Dear Foetus . . . .” When Izzy miscarries, Dave is eager to try again. Not she. Crisis Number One. Then Louder folds, and Dave slides into writing “sensitive male” articles for Femme and sitting in as an advice columnist at Teen Scene. He’s a surprise success at “Love Doctoring,” and his teenaged readers include one Nicola O’Connell, who writes him a letter identifying herself as Dave’s love-child, the result of a one-night stand with her mother in 1986 in Corfu. She’s recognized him from the photo on his column. Dave begins a clandestine parenting relationship with Nicola, meeting at a Burger King and beginning to feel like her father. But what to tell Izzy? All this is sappy at times, but Gayle is most nuanced in detailing Dave’s growing attachment to his daughter, and the complications her existence—and his secrecy—bring to his marriage. Along the way, the story’s enlivened by witty and knowing descriptions of the magazine world, including a sardonic pastiche of articles written from the sensitive guy’s point of view (“Women and the messages they leave on men’s answerphones”) and samples from Dave’s column (“Dear Love Doctor Dave, My dad caught me and my boyfriend lying on my bed kissing and he went ballistic. . . .”).
Slick and quick.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-7766-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Downtown Press/Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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