A guilty-pleasure page-turner despite its obvious flaws.
Brown revisits the Winstons of her debut, The Shirt Off His Back (2001); the tight-knit family must once again battle queen bitch Catherine Hawkins.
Seven years ago, Catherine fought Terry Winston for child custody (really just a ploy to improve her image—yes, the woman’s that cold). She lost and has rarely seen her twin girls Alisa and Ariana since. Having raised the girls single-handedly since their birth, Terry is now married to Jackie, and the family includes her twins and Terry and Jackie’s own son. They are a happy, prosperous African-American family in Dallas, but just wait until Catherine gets back on the scene to ruin everything. In the intervening years she has parlayed her business success into a multinational empire, backstabbing and dirty dealing all the way into an L.A. mansion, a private jet and boy toys at the ready. But now Catherine needs a kidney transplant, and while money can’t cure her, her daughters can. She shows up on the girls’ prom night to share the special occasion, but really to see which of the two she can manipulate into becoming a donor. Proud, furious Alisa speaks her mind, but softer Ariana agrees to become a donor, secretly hoping that this act of filial selflessness will inspire Catherine’s love. Fat chance, and everyone knows it (especially outraged Jackie), but it can’t be denied that Ariana’s kindness is inspiring. A few subplots are tossed into the drama: Catherine is planning on major layoffs and outsourcing, making a couple of dangerous enemies, and Jackie, feeling less than the mother she’s always been to the girls, suspects that Catherine may have secrets that could further damage the family. Though the writing lacks subtlety and the plot is a soap opera told in broad strokes—Catherine is BAD, Terry is GOOD—Brown does offer some keen insight in her depiction of Jackie: conflicted, jealous and devoted to keeping her family together. When it’s discovered that Ariana has a malformed kidney, Catherine’s salvation rests on Alisa’s shoulders—will she come through for her much-hated mother?
A guilty-pleasure page-turner despite its obvious flaws.Pub Date: May 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46945-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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