Nicely atmospheric but unsatisfying. Weak on plot, and the revelations (when they come) are pretty disappointing.
Impressionistic account of an orphan who marries a mysterious architect and comes of age in early 20th-century Ireland.
From the Brontës to Barbara Cartland, the poor orphan who marries a dark and brooding gentleman has been a romantic staple. McBride (The Land of Women, 2003, etc.) weaves a Celtic thread into the pattern, setting her tale in Dublin and the west of Ireland during the years just before WWI. Our heroine is young Dierdre, who grows up on the forlorn Great Blasket Island but comes to live at the Enfant de Marie Convent on the mainland after losing both her parents. There, she’s given a good education by the sisters, and in due course she asks to enter the convent as a nun herself. One of her fellow novices is Bairbre O’Breen, the daughter of a wealthy widow whose benefactions have supported the convent for years. Bairbre’s brother Manus, a young architecture student, often comes to visit and quickly falls in love with Dierdre—who wastes no time in forsaking the religious life to accept his proposal of marriage. Soon the young couple settle in Dublin, where Manus begins his career as assistant to a prominent architect. Although a baby son dies in infancy, Dierdre has two daughters who grow up into bright, happy girls. But the O’Breens are a family of secrets, and Dierdre soon finds that her mother-in-law is intent on having a grandson who will become a priest (even though both Manus and Dierdre have lost their Catholic faith) on account of a murky scandal far back in the O’Breen genealogy. Dierdre, for her part, has a mystery connected with the death of her parents that she’s loath to tell Manus. Who said the Irish can’t keep a secret? If this family were any less communicative they’d be mute.
Nicely atmospheric but unsatisfying. Weak on plot, and the revelations (when they come) are pretty disappointing.Pub Date: June 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-5497-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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