A lackluster soap opera with designer labels, expensive restaurants, and sexy locations, but not a spark of glamour. McGehee (Regret Not a Moment, 1993) takes as her heroine Dominique Avallon, the full-lipped daughter of a wealthy French cotton-manufacturing family in Cairo. To escape her sheltered upbringing, 21-year-old Dominique, in a simple navy dress, gets a job as secretary to a handsome but married British officer during the Suez crisis of 1956. When she refuses to put his children through the agony of a divorce, and political turmoil threatens her safety, Dominique marries Anton Renard and takes off for San Francisco in a fawn silk suit. Anton, who comes to bed with whiskey on his breath, is a louse who lives with his mother and lives off his women. Dominique escapes to Manhattan, where she becomes a successful event planner at New York's best department store. On the eve of her greatest triumph, she meets handsome shipping magnate Clay Parker, who sweeps her off her tiny feet and takes her to live in New Orleans. After giving up her career to be a good wife and mother, Dominique is dumped by Clay, who has fallen in love with a younger woman. Dominique buries her sorrow in Sara Lee pound cake, but in an epiphany finally recovers her backbone, resolves never again to depend on any man, and switches to tuna- fish salad. At 37, with her teenage daughter and problematic mother in tow, she moves to Washington, D.C. to build a new life. She resumes her friendship with charismatic Louisiana Senator Mark Patout, who is exponentially wealthier than Clay, but can she once again give up all she has built for the sake of romance? In a cream-colored suit, Dominique taxis to the Russell Senate Office Building. Like its heroine, tasteful but boring.
Pub Date: April 3, 1995
ISBN: 0-316-55854-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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