No real surprises, but some essential satisfactions.
Kadish’s second (after From a Sealed Room, 1998) is a conventional modern romance, complete with life lessons, wry comedy and a supporting cast of best friends.
Lines like “dating is an existential insult,” however, make it a bit brainier than the genre norm. Tracy Farber, 33, is a professor of American literature at a New York university. Single, ambitious and up for tenure, she shares her daily dilemmas with colleague Jeff (gay), married Hannah (pregnant) and actor Yolanda (also single, with a serially broken heart). Then Tracy meets George, a funny Canadian who has escaped his Christian fundamentalist upbringing, and they fall in love. All’s well until George, after less than two months of dating, proposes marriage. Tracy agrees, but is plagued by growing feelings of uncertainty and panic. When she confronts George, he breaks off the relationship. Office politics, in particular problems with a sick colleague and an unstable grad student, make for a less compelling subplot in a novel that’s already slightly too long. Tracy also considers her next research project: an examination of happiness in literature—hence the title (Tolstoy having famously lumped together and dismissed happy characters in favor of the distinctly more interesting unhappy ones). Is now-heartbroken Tracy destined to be a tragic heroine, or will she get a happy ending? Kadish brings a sprightly intelligence to bear on this familiar scenario, lending it fresh charm as well as some shrewd emotional insights, although not much suspense.
No real surprises, but some essential satisfactions.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-54669-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
Three bridegrooms for three sisters: Roberts (True Betrayals, 1995, etc.) stylishly moseys into Big Sky romance. Jack Mercy was a mean son of a bitch when he was alive, and as a corpse, buried with his Stetson and his bullwhip, he's not much better. According to his will, his three daughters, who've never met and whom Jack had by three different wives, must live together for a year at his big Montana ranch house in order to win their inheritance. During the long winter, the women bicker and bond and get entangled with three sexy, strapping fellows. Roberts has always been a winner at sexual tension and sexy dialogue, and so the reader gets to see not one but three couples get past the preliminaries and into the sack. The youngest sister, cowgirl Willa, manager of the Mercy ranch and daughter of an Ute mother, matches wits and strong wills with Ben McKinnon, lusty part owner of the Three Rocks spread. Lily, from Virginia, is a delicate, bird-boned creature who's been battered by her husband, but is now taken under the wing of Adam Wolfchild, Willa's Indian half-brother. And, finally, Tess, a sharp-dressing, wisecracking screenwriter from Hollywood who couldn't wait to get back to Rodeo Drive, stays to marry Nate, a frontier lawyer who raises horses, graduated from Yale, and loves Keats. Providing the usual Roberts suspense is a serial killer who guts and scalps his victims—not only humans but (in the newest romance-novel manifestation of evil) calves, cats, skunks and deer. (Why would anyone do that to Bambi's mom? wails Tess.) Roberts also includes a genuine, successful red herring, virgin territory for most romance writers, and incorporates all the important rituals of the genre with her customary skill and humor. A good read on a long winter's night.
Pub Date: March 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14122-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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