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
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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