Hell hath no fury like a scorned woman who finds out that all her friends knew her shame.
B.J. Almond is used to being the queen bee. The wife of an NFL head coach, she has adopted his top status in the wives' hierarchy, lording her no-nonsense attitude and slightly conservative personal style over her coterie of assistant coaches' wives. Not that her designer duds aren't as costly or her pleasures any less extravagant, but neither her necklines nor her morals have plunged quite so much as her juniors' have in order to keep their marriages together. Small wonder then, that when B.J. walks in on her husband fooling around with one of their own, she's furious—and when she realizes that all her so-called friends knew, she's madder still. Her planned revenge includes a tell-all book, in which she threatens to use all the knowledge she has gathered as the take-charge go-to gal of their clique, dirt her agent promises will make her book a bestseller. As she holes up in the Ritz, supposedly writing, she recalls them all—the time she had to rescue one friend who was left nude and dazed in a no-tell motel, the trip she took so another could get anonymous treatment for an STD—in lurid detail. In between her racy rememberings, the other gals scurry to salvage their lives of immense privilege and, occasionally, love. The fallout gets worse when one woman threatens to write her own book and another turns violent. But the real passion in this African-American-targeted fantasy by Tucker (Daddy by Default, 2010, etc.) is for the Jimmy Choos and other expensive paraphernalia that these women accept as their due. While the sex scenes are written with titillation in mind (all bodies are hard, all passion peaks), it's the fashion that really excites these women and, most likely, the readers who choose to give them their time. Payback may be dirty, nasty and mean, but all dressed up, it provides a guilty pleasure for the reader.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59309-315-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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