by Sarah Woodhouse ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 13, 1995
An appealing, busily peopled tale by the British author of several similarly bustling novels with iron-spined heroines (Enchanted Ground, 1993, etc.). This time, a recently widowed Englishwoman—in her 30s, frazzled, with a glum view of humanity in general—learns to cope (though barely) with an assortment of colliding guests, help, and neighbors, in her small hotel in a postwar Italian village. Nan has been accustomed to thinking of herself as the perennial outsider; certainly her mother had given ``home'' in England a sour meaning, and Nan's late husband, much older than she, had loved her but in an avuncular fashion—a fashion quite apart from that of lovers steaming in the fires of passion. Now, after a spell of post- bereavement weeping, Nan has rallied to try to put down roots, to belong to her villa-turned-hotel and its village. The cluster of troubles begins with the death of a guest, the elderly Major Baghot, whose vague little widow Molly seems not to care. The elusive Molly, given to wandering over meadows, is to be shipped back to England to live with her horrid sister Lily. But Molly seems disinclined to leave, and Lilly's own arrival approaches like Armageddon. Then there is the doomed love affair between a beautiful convent orphan and a dear young priest (a dark, secret tragedy, sunk in the village's past, intervenes), as well as the irritating affair of Dr. Fortuna, who's quietly, affectionately charmed by Nan, and the wife of a guest, whose husband fumes and whose little boy roams. While the household staff offers loud commentary, and matters are at a boil, Nan roars back and forth in her ancient Morris, shoring up finances and sanity, and hunting for the lost. Finally, good folks rally round, including competent, irreverent Aunt Dot from England, a priest (both friend and foe), and Dr. Fortuna. Without the lethal edge of Mary Wesley, but Woodhouse's fans- -as well as Wesley's—will be charmed and delighted by this comedy- with-a-bite.
Pub Date: Dec. 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13563-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
Share your opinion of this book
More by Sarah Woodhouse
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
35
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elin Hilderbrand
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.