Following in the footsteps of Iris Murdoch, Vickers is concerned with the spiritual dimensions of love and love’s effect on...
A psychiatrist with his own bedeviling ghosts finds himself irrevocably changed by his interactions with a patient in this philosophical romance from British novelist Vickers (Mr. Golightly’s Holiday, 2004, etc.).
David, who has never resolved his guilt over the accidental death of his older brother as a small child, specializes in treating suicidal patients. His latest, Elizabeth, is slow to open up until she and David discuss the art of Caravaggio. Elizabeth tells him her story in one hours-long session. She was deeply in love with an art scholar, Thomas, who introduced her to Caravaggio years earlier. Elizabeth and Thomas spent one perfect night together, then lost track of each other for years (shades of An Affair to Remember). Elizabeth made an unhappy marriage and bore two children before she and Thomas found each other again and rekindled their love as soulmates. Although Thomas was ever patient and devoted, Elizabeth was unable to move beyond indecision and distrust of her and Thomas’s feelings. While visiting Thomas in Italy, Elizabeth acceded to a summons home from her tyrannical mother-in-law. Thomas had a heart attack and died before she could return to him. She has never forgiven herself. Immediately after hearing Elizabeth’s story, David learns that his own wife, Olivia, whom he does not really like, is having an affair with his best friend, who happens to be married to the woman David loved but dumped for Olivia. Elizabeth checks out of the hospital, but she has opened David’s eyes to the truths in his own life. While in Italy to give a lecture against the indiscriminate use of lobotomies, David sees Elizabeth one last time. His lecture becomes a moving description of Caravaggio’s painting The Supper at Emmaus.
Following in the footsteps of Iris Murdoch, Vickers is concerned with the spiritual dimensions of love and love’s effect on the soul.Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-374-22190-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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