Another tale of female friendships conquering all, wrapped in luxury and faux danger.
To celebrate her billionaire husband’s 35th birthday, Pauline has arranged the party of a lifetime. With his best friends from college (and their spouses) at a no-expenses-spared resort in Jamaica, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, everything. Pauline herself is a controlling robot, determined to anticipate every need and extravagant desire, from arranging helicopters rides to elegant beachside picnics, replete with masseuses and hot tubs. She wants everything perfect for Dwight—after all, without him, she and her mother could never have paid her sister’s medical expenses. But Dwight can never know the truth about Therese’s illness. Luckily, Allie is there. Cheerful Allie, who always knows how to smooth feathers. But Allie, too, has a secret. Her biological father may have died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), but she cannot bear to tell Ryan, her husband. Perhaps she could confide in Dwight, but what does that choice imply about the strength of her marriage? Exhausted and overwhelmed from raising four children, Tina is determined to relax and enjoy herself. Why not? Allie’s mother is taking care of all the kids, and Tina’s husband, Gio, still finds her attractive, despite her more matronly figure. And then there’s Savannah, separated from her husband, Gary (who cheated on her with The Nurse), and hell-bent on showing off her assets to every man on the island, including her friends’ husbands. Pekkanen details every menu, catalogs each event’s luxuries and narrates each woman’s inner turmoil. The men, even the birthday boy, are merely props for the women’s troubles—that is, until Gary’s sudden arrival and a Category-2 hurricane begins bearing down on the group.
Another tale of female friendships conquering all, wrapped in luxury and faux danger.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7351-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Pain, grief, and hurt are all part of life in this moving portrayal of the many forms love can take.
An isolated, prickly septuagenarian in London who has lost her husband works to overcome her fears that she is a burden to those around her.
Millicent Carmichael—Missy—married the man she loved, Leo, in 1959. But after a half-century of living, loving, and growing older in a huge house in Stoke Newington, London, he is gone, and she is bereft. Her son and grandson, both of whom she dotes on, live more than 9,000 miles away in Australia, and she is recently estranged from her daughter, who lives nearby in Cambridge. Missy is a difficult person with sharp edges—she knows this, her Leo knew this—and she is at loose ends, having lived in a community for all this time without getting to know anyone because she held so tightly to her family she made no time for anyone else. But now, the loneliness is crushing her. A few life-changing moments happen in quick succession: She faints in the park and meets neighbor Sylvie, who kindly sits with her for a bit; her home is robbed while she feigns sleep; and she agrees to do a favor for brusque neighbor Angela—journalist, friend of Sylvie, and single mother to Otis. And so Missy finds herself tending to a vivacious dog of indeterminate breed, Bob, that she neither wanted nor feels capable of taking care of. Debut author Morrey has deftly created a series of love stories, interwoven together and told in snippets through time: Missy’s undying devotion to Leo, despite his—and her—many flaws; her devotion to her children, which she often isn’t able to verbalize; and her growing niche in the community that Bob—her Bobby, her unexpected companion and confidant—introduces her to during their daily walks. There are no saccharine moments to mar this tale.
Pain, grief, and hurt are all part of life in this moving portrayal of the many forms love can take.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54244-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader’s...
In her third novel set in Atlanta, Jones (The Untelling, 2005, etc.) writes about two African-American half sisters, only one of whom knows that the other exists until their father’s double life starts to unravel.
When James Witherspoon, the owner of a successful limousine service, and Gwendolyn Yarboro have their marriage ceremony in 1969 four months after the birth of their baby Dana, Gwen knows that James already has a wife and an even younger baby. While James, who visits regularly if never often enough, and Gwen, a practical nurse, make sure Dana has every middle-class advantage, Dana grows up aware that her parents’ “marriage” is a secret and that she cannot openly claim her father; James’ devoted stepbrother Raleigh is listed on her birth certificate. Gwen and Dana habitually spy on James’ legitimate wife Laverne and daughter Chaurisse, who live in blissful ignorance of James’s bigamy. By adolescence, Dana, who attends a prestigious magnate high school and wants to attend Mount Holyoke, increasingly resents the plainer, less gifted Chaurisse, whose needs always seem to come first for James. After meeting Chaurisse by accident at a science fair, Dana finds ways for their paths to intersect. When she finally “befriends” Chaurisse, Chaurisse is thrilled that a popular girl likes her enough to visit her at home. Visits happen during hours Dana knows James will not be there. Dana’s adolescent plans, for acceptance as much as revenge, inevitably go awry, but this is less a tragedy than a case of survival and making do. While Dana is at the novel’s center, Jones gives both girls’ points of view, allowing readers to empathize with each of James’s families. Chaurisse may not know about Dana, but she is far from blissful in her ignorance, and her mother Laverne has endured more than her fair share of suffering. James is harder to fathom but also hard to hate.
Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader’s heart.Pub Date: May 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56512-990-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
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