Breezily paced and improbably plotted costume epic, with an ending only Hollywood could love.
A dashing colonial American officer travels to Russia to persuade Catherine the Great not to help the British defeat the American rebellion.
You know Russia’s a tough place when 24-year-old Captain Keiran Selkirk, en route to St. Petersburg, watches his boisterous comrade in arms, Count Gorlov, save their sleigh from a pack of wolves by tossing a hapless passenger over the side. From such gory beginnings, screenwriter (Braveheart; Pearl Harbor) and novelist Wallace (So Late Into the Night, 1983, etc.) introduces a Russia of 1774 that is almost comically brutal, ludicrously sentimental, unknowably vast, riddled with rebellion, and so intensely bound up in European intrigues that it’s a wonder Benjamin Franklin would send only one man to argue against a British plan to acquire 20,000 Russian troops for keeping order in the American colonies. Captain Selkirk is unspeakably handsome, a superb fighter (he polishes off a band of marauding Cossacks), reasonably adept at several languages, and a widower—perfect for the scheming females hovering about Catherine’s court. Invited immediately to the French ambassador’s ball, he becomes infatuated with the daughter of the British ambassador, Lord Settlefield, who seems aware of Selkirk’s mission but won’t reveal how Selkirk will be thwarted. Then Selkirk and Gorlov are asked to protect a gaggle of young aristocratic females. That trip runs afoul of Cossacks and, after performing with suitable bravery, Selkirk is saved from certain death by the bravery of Beatrice, a servant to one of the Russian princesses. Before Selkirk’s burgeoning romantic interest in Beatrice can develop, however, he and Gorlov are sent by Potemkin to put down a Cossack rebellion. Selkirk slices a Cossack in half but almost dies from a bullet wound. His bravery wins him an audience with Catherine the Great—in her bedchamber. Will Selkirk’s homespun innocence, spunk, and naiveté triumph on this very different battlefield?
Breezily paced and improbably plotted costume epic, with an ending only Hollywood could love.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-6519-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
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
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
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