Chilly and pretentious fictionalizing of a devastating disease.
A cartographer and big-selling author charts the progress of her cancer.
Despite her babyish first name, Cindy Frier is no giddy scribbler of contemporary fluff. What’s in a name, anyway? In British author Duffy’s latest (Wavewalker, 1996, etc.), the answer is everything. Cindy wrote her thesis on the hidden meaning of maps and mapmaking. (For confused readers, the forced connection here is place names.) Then she turned it into an acclaimed book with the pretentious and oddly punctuated title Dis-Location—the function of space over time: Naming as Generation. (Should anyone doubt the worth of this unlikely bestseller, arcane quotes from it preface each chapter.) Apparently a “hungry public” just can’t get enough of the hitherto-unplumbed subject of mapmaking metaphysics, or of Cindy’s incredible ability to combine “measured truths with potential magic.” Other fun facts about Cindy: She’s only 26. She has great skin. She likes to munch on pistachios, which she keeps in her pocket. In other words, she’s sort of real. Prickly by nature and resentful of her fame, Cindy warms up to working-class, mixed-race British reporter Jack Stratton at a Manhattan party. For some inexplicable reason, he’s given a TV news show of his very own shortly thereafter, in Los Angeles. The lovers move to southern California, while Cindy thinks deep and generally incomprehensible thoughts on the meaning of that journey, with a few nods to all journeys made by humanity throughout time, etc. But it’s not long before Cindy is diagnosed with breast cancer and turns to creating a detailed physical and psychological map of that experience, from the devouring of the body to the corrosive effect upon the soul. Duffy, herself a survivor of breast cancer, spares no details.
Chilly and pretentious fictionalizing of a devastating disease.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32541-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
An effective infomercial—and guest-room sleep-aid—for Inn BoonsBoro.
In Roberts’ new series launch, the conversion of a tumbledown Maryland hotel into a boutique country inn fails to expel an extremely shy resident ghost.
The first half of the novel, essentially an extended prologue, is painstakingly slow. As Roberts demonstrates a newfound passion for construction minutia (perhaps because she renovated and owns Inn Boonsboro in real life), the activities of architect Beckett Montgomery and his two builder brothers as they retrofit a historic building in Boonsboro (near the Antietam battlefield) unfold almost in real time. Working under the supervision of their benevolent tyrant of a mother, the brothers exchange good-natured macho gibes as they appoint the Inn-to-be with the most opulent tile, woodwork and fixtures. Amid all the bromance, Beckett watches longingly as his crush since grade school, Clare, goes about running her amazingly profitable independent bookstore while raising three unruly boys alone. (Her soldier husband died in Iraq.) Does she or doesn’t she notice him, Beckett muses ad infinitum. Meanwhile, Clare tells herself that Beckett is not really interested, just being kind to a war widow. Once this minor miscommunication is cleared up, the two begin a tentative relationship, however, the necessity of introducing obstacles to true love has Roberts stretching for things for them to squabble about, including the sighting by Clare’s youngest son of a ghostly lady dressed in an old-timey long gown, staring from an upper story window of the Inn. (The ghost, nicknamed “Lizzy,” has betrayed her presence to Beckett and a few others only with a scent of honeysuckle and a penchant for opening doors.) Cartoonish villain Sam, the spoiled, indolent son of the area’s wealthiest family, stalks Clare and tries to take indecent liberties, but his belated appearance, and his failure to pose a believable threat, do little to propel the plot. The fictional doppelganger of Boonsboro is an anachronistic bubble, seemingly untouched by the blight besetting so many American small towns.
An effective infomercial—and guest-room sleep-aid—for Inn BoonsBoro.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-425-24321-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a...
An unhappily married couple spends a year apart in Reid’s (Forever, Interrupted, 2013) novel about second chances.
When we meet Lauren, she and her husband, Ryan, are having a meltdown trying to find their car in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium after a game. Through a series of flashbacks, Lauren reveals how the two of them went from being inseparable to being insufferable in each other’s eyes—and in desperate need of a break. Both their courtship and their fights seem so ordinary—they met in college; he doesn’t like Greek food—that the most heartbreaking part of their pending separation is deciding who will get custody of their good-natured dog. It’s not until Ryan moves out that the juicy details emerge. Lauren surreptitiously logs into his email one day, in a fit of missing him, and discovers a bunch of emails to her that he had saved but not sent. Liberated by Ryan’s candor, Lauren saves her replies for him to find, and the two of them read each other’s unfiltered thoughts as they go about their separate lives. Neither character holds anything back, which makes the healing process more complex, and more compelling, than simply getting revenge or getting one’s groove back. Meanwhile, as Lauren spends more time with her family and friends, she explores the example set for her by her parents and learns that there are many ways to be happy. It’s never clear until the final pages whether living alone will bring Lauren and Ryan back together or force them apart forever. But when the year is up, the resolution is neither sappy nor cynical; it’s arrived at after an honest assessment of what each partner can’t live with and can’t live without.
Reid’s tome on married life is as uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read for anyone who is in (or hopes to be in) a committed relationship.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1284-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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