The best friend of the first female US president comes to terms with her legacy after the charismatic chief executive's assassination. Melanie Lombard and Nora Whitney were freshman roommates at Penn; 25 years later, Melanie is elected president, then promptly murdered. Now it's the first anniversary of her death, and Nora, a high-powered executive at an educational software company, gets a call from Hank, Melanie's widower. A famous biographer is doing a book on Melanie, and Hank fears that he'll discover her longtime affair with a handsome Frenchman, Jacques DeBrin, who has suspicious connections in the Middle East. Nora, who'd told Melanie about her own significant romance with Jacques, feels betrayed that Melanie told her nothing in return, but she's still committed to protecting her friend's reputation. And so she jets to London to debrief Jacques. While there, she also meets a brilliant young software designer who has created a revolutionary virtual-reality geometry lesson. After Nora agrees to help Danny Court, the current American president, by pressing his agenda on Melanie's former allies, funny things start to happen: A van almost runs Nora down; then her brakes are tampered with. Who's behind this intimidation campaign? Nora goes to Harlem to woo curmudgeonly power broker Nathan Marks, offering him a free demo of the geometry program as her calling card. Meanwhile, the biographer is closing in on Melanie's secrets, but he's also proclaimed himself attracted to Nora. The shaggy-dog conspiracy behind the attacks is not this debut novel's strong point. The real draw is Nora—a powerful, sexy, self-doubting 47-year-old who's spent her life in the shadow of a magnetic and manipulative woman, and who is only now coming to terms with her anger at her second-fiddle role, and with her own abilities. Anemic suspense, then, but a complex and engaging portrait of a late-blooming politico and her halting efforts at an adult romance.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-43731-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
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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