A freshly rendered tale of growing up and living in the world by a late-starting author with a bright future.
The offbeat coming-of-age story of Elly, an English girl with an overactive imagination, an intense bond with her older brother, a Belgian hare named god and multiple dates with destiny in post-9/11 New York.
British actress Winman's fiction debut, spanning the late 1960s and early 2000s, boasts one of the more endearingly unconventional families in a while. It's an open secret that Elly's father's lesbian sister has long been enamored of Elly's mother—whom her father married largely as a favor to his sibling. Elly's brother Joe, who is five years older, has known he was gay since he was little. The household is completed by a foppish, aging border and a female Shirley Bassey impersonator. And then there is Elly's mysterious friend Jenny Penny, whom she rescues from neglect at the hands of Jenny's loose-living single mother but can't rescue from a murder conviction later in life. As often as life affirms itself in the book, dark clouds hover: Elly's mother's parents were killed in a freak accident, Elly's father narrowly escapes a bomb blast on a tube train, there are sexual abuses and cancers from which to recover—and, in the second half, there is the horrific bombing of the twin towers. True to the title of a newspaper column Elly now writes about her personal history, Joe and the rediscovered love of his life Charlie both become lost and then found again following the blasts. Though the first half of the book is fresher and more striking then the vaguely familiar New York part (the scene in which Elly auditions for a school pageant in dark glasses, "a cross between Roy Orbison and the dwarf in the film Don't Look Now,” is priceless), Winman mostly lives up to the advance word on the novel. Her quirky voice maintains its energy; even at her most precocious, Elly never wears out her welcome.
A freshly rendered tale of growing up and living in the world by a late-starting author with a bright future.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60819-534-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fast, feel-good story about finding happiness.
A woman attempts to overhaul her life with the help of an unconventional therapist in Giordano’s debut.
Camille is a 30-something Parisian woman with a husband, son, and a good job. She has security, love, and everything she needs—so why does she feel bored and unhappy? When she has a minor car accident during a storm, she stumbles into the home of a man who, conveniently, offers to help her fix her life. Claude deduces that Camille is suffering from a case of acute routinitis, a “sickness of the soul” that means she’s dissatisfied, unmotivated, and unhappy even though she has everything she needs. Claude, as a routinologist, devises an unconventional course of treatment for Camille, one that has her completing some tasks that are simple (such as spring cleaning her house) and some that are slightly odder (such as riding in a hot air balloon) to transform her life. Although Claude’s methods are unusual, Camille hopes they will help her find a deeper connection with her husband and son and perhaps even a better understanding of herself. Giordano has created a quick and light read, but without much information about Camille’s backstory, it’s hard to get invested in her transformation. Claude presents interesting ideas about philosophy and personal growth, but none of them are explored with much complexity. Although it lacks depth at times, it may be a good pick for readers who are looking for a lighter take on Eat, Pray, Love.
A fast, feel-good story about finding happiness.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-53559-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
The subject of parents charging past every ethical restraint in pursuit of crème de la crème education could not be more...
Four close friends, their husbands, their children, their housecleaners—and one application-only magnet school that will drive them all over the brink.
A Boulder-esque town in the Front Range of the Rockies, Crystal, Colorado, is a progressive paradise where four entwined families are raising their children, though death, divorce, and drugs have taken their toll on the group since the moms met at baby swim class years back. The women give each other mugs with friendship quotes each year on the anniversary of that meeting, and they get together every Friday morning for a 4-mile run, "a ritual carved into the flinty stone of their lives…shared since they'd first started trimming up again after the births of their children." Beneath the surface, resentments are already simmering—one family is far wealthier than the others; the widowed mom is a neurotic mess; one of the couples didn't make it through elementary school and he's remarried to "a hot young au pair who was great with the twins [and] a willing partner in mindblowing carnality." Then comes the announcement of a public magnet school for exceptional learners, with a standardized test as the first step in separating the wheat from the chaff. The novel's depiction of the ensuing devolution is grounded in acute social observation—class, race, privilege, woke and libertarian politics—then hits the mark on the details as well. From the bellowing of the dads on the soccer field to the oversharing in the teenager's vlog, down to the names of the kids themselves—twins Aidan and Charlie Unsworth-Chaudhury; best friends Emma Z and Emma Q; nerdy chessmaster Xander Frye—Holsinger's (The Invention of Fire, 2015) pitch is close to perfect.
The subject of parents charging past every ethical restraint in pursuit of crème de la crème education could not be more timely, and the Big Little Lies treatment creates a deliciously repulsive and eerily current page-turner.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53496-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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