An entertaining novel that founders in its superficial treatment of its characters, particularly women.
Intrigue, romantic rivalries, and mistaken identities abound in this Victorian drama.
Nathan Sinclair, the protagonist and piano-playing prodigy of Colton’s debut work of historical fiction, doesn’t think he’s anything other than the poor son of a French opera singer. But a meeting with celebrity debutante Jocelyn Charlesworth, so beautiful that “once you gaze upon her countenance, it is impossible to resist staring…disbelieving that a face could be so radiant,” launches an adventure he never could have imagined. Pursued by debt collectors, Nathan decides to become a fugitive, evading the law while performing at the social gatherings of London’s elite. At one such party, he’s introduced to Regina Lancaster, with whom he immediately falls in love. Though not as beautiful as Jocelyn, Regina, who lost her parents at a young age in a fire, helps place orphans with loving families. Meanwhile, Jocelyn, who needs “the perfect excuse to decline introductions and put a halt to [her] tedious letter writing,” hatches a scheme to convince her meddling family she’s courting Nathan, promising him that “since this shall all be a game, our feelings cannot be truly hurt.” Hoping to discredit Nathan, Jocelyn’s brother secretly publishes an article claiming that Nathan’s father was an art forger who was “sent to prison for twenty years, where he died.” Humiliated, Nathan disappears from London’s high society, but he is finally free to propose to his “beloved” Regina. A final twist reveals Nathan’s true parentage and ensures his engagement to Jocelyn, but he already promised himself to Regina. Nathan must choose between Jocelyn’s wealth and beauty and Regina’s virtue. Though this is an exciting read, packed with mysteries and unexpected twists, it lacks charm. The final chapters of the book resolve disappointingly, and women are treated solely as objects for marriage. According to Colton, beauty is a woman’s most valuable trait; the literally “disfigured” Regina is more suited for work than love, while the desired Jocelyn is destined for a life of “passion and pleasure.” The flat treatment of these female characters makes an otherwise engrossing novel unlikable.
An entertaining novel that founders in its superficial treatment of its characters, particularly women.Pub Date: July 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68114-229-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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