Readers who find themselves riveted by stories like Sybil and A Beautiful Mind will likely enjoy this absorbing, but...
A family takes on the challenge for caring for two abused children in this inspiring debut novel.
After finding out that 4-year-old Katie has been sexually abused by her father and witnessed her mother’s murder, Matthew and Carolyn O’Gorman adopt and raise their niece as if she were their own child. But as Katie struggles to deal with the violent memories of her mother’s death and the horrible abuse she’s endured at the hands of her father, she tests her adoptive parents’ patience with her jealous nature and cruel temper. When Luis, another abused child, enters their lives, the O’Gorman family accepts him with open arms—Katie most of all. Together, Katie and Luis form a friendship, and eventually a relationship, as they help each other recover from the unspeakable things they’ve had to endure. Rosa’s novel, inspired by her interest in child abuse cases, offers readers a glimpse into the lives of those affected by abuse. From Katie’s inability to distinguish fantasy from reality to her Aunt Carolyn’s unfailing patience and accepting nature, Rosa provides a subjective view of the bad and the good. While some readers will be intimidated by the wordy nature of this mammoth 750-page novel, and the confusing tendency to shift between the present and the past, others will appreciate the honesty and gentleness that Rosa weaves into each sentence. Although some characters come across as one-dimensional, the author does a great job of acknowledging Katie’s struggles and balances them with her accomplishments. The novel’s optimistic conclusion allows the reader to see the extent of Katie’s growth, providing hope that real-life abused children may fare as well as she.
Readers who find themselves riveted by stories like Sybil and A Beautiful Mind will likely enjoy this absorbing, but long-winded, novel.Pub Date: April 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-1439251058
Page Count: 764
Publisher: BookSurge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2011
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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