Much dribbling punctuated by a few slam dunks.
Two weeks in the life of a man who caught his wife in flagrante delicto—or did he?
When Wall Street executive Jonathan Sweetwater returns home early—an unlikely occurrence since he's usually jetting around the country at the beck and call of Bruce, a hoops-obsessed CEO who likes to go one-on-one on private NBA-caliber courts—he hears the unmistakable sound of a tryst emanating from a guest bedroom in his Connecticut mansion. A glimpse through the keyhole confirms his worst fears—he sees the backs of two naked people, a long-haired man sitting on the Frette sheets getting dressed and a woman resembling his wife, Claire, walking into the bathroom. Without making his presence known, beyond leaving his briefcase in the living room, Jonathan takes off on another trip. A cat-and-mouse game unfolds: Which spouse is going to admit what to whom and who is going to do it first? Every time Jonathan tries to confront his wife, he is interrupted, in one case by his surprise 40th birthday party. Such a coincidence-dependent plotline threatens to grow wearying, until Greenberg shifts focus to back story—Jonathan embarks on an inquiry about his late father, Percy, a charismatic senator who left his mother when Jonathan was 9 and married five more times. Jonathan has the resources to investigate Percy’s serial monogamy himself while he waits for a private detective’s report on Claire. Greenberg is adept at description and dialogue. The basketball scenes, predictably for this ESPN sportscaster, are compelling—in one, Jonathan challenges Michael Jordan. Jonathan’s conversations with his mother, and the five other wives, in colorful locales—Manhattan, Chicago, Aspen, Nevis and London—are entertaining even if they generate scant insight into Percy’s behavior or its relevance to the burning question at hand—did she or didn’t she? There's a superfluous subplot involving Bruce’s penchant for blackmailing employees. Ultimately, Greenberg paints himself into narrative corners where the only exits are marked with clichés.
Much dribbling punctuated by a few slam dunks.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-232586-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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