An entertaining treat with enough history to satisfy serious-minded readers.
Jane Austen meets Bleak House in an engaging historical novel about the demands of marriage in late 18th-century England.
The first installment in a proposed trilogy, the book centers on Mary Cole, a Gloucester butcher’s daughter whose chief virtue is an unalterable sense of goodness, a quality hard to maintain as the youngest sister of two unapologetic harlots. Barely 16 years old, Mary catches the eye of notorious lothario Frederick Augustus, the 5th Earl of Berkeley, who has always sworn to avoid the prison of marriage. Frederick senses that a beautiful saint like Mary can save him from his immoral ways and stops at nothing to seduce her. When she refuses his advances, he manipulates her family’s dire economic state and tricks her into unwedded communion. Despite Mary’s true love for James Perry, an aspiring young lawyer with only the purest of intentions, she gives up her happiness to save her family. Answering demands that they marry, Frederick sets up a fraudulent marriage contract, one that he convinces Mary can never be revealed because of her low social status and the indecent reputation of her sisters. During the next 15 years, she bears a half-dozen children and potential heirs but finds that claiming a birthright for her seemingly illegitimate sons will become the fight of her life. Through the narrative thread concerning Frederick’s aversion to marriage, Cole explores the marital adventures of Frederick’s close friend the Prince of Wales, whose desire for the twice-widowed Maria Fitzherbert runs afoul of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772–it prohibits the prince from marrying without the consent of his father King George III, who disapproves of the widow’s Catholic faith. The novel moves along like a runaway carriage and features many delectable trappings–chance encounters at the opera, duplicitous servants, church officials taken to drink and hidden agendas–found in the very best Victorian novels.
An entertaining treat with enough history to satisfy serious-minded readers.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9556877-1-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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