A bit heavy on wish fulfillment, this vivid novel is still a satisfying read.
A South Carolina woman dreams of moving to New York City in this debut novel.
Edwards’ (Some Favors, 2011) story introduces readers to the heroine, Nadine Carter Barnwell, born to a good family in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where all is not well. Her autocratic father, Sam, has become even more so since Nadine’s mother died. Close to college graduation, Nadine is determined to head to New York and fulfill her dream of becoming a successful modern dancer. This is bad enough in Sam’s practical view, but she plans to arrive there with her boyfriend, Frank Prescott, an aspiring actor. Thankfully, Nadine’s Aunt Amelia, a wise earth-mother type, runs interference and counsels Nadine to follow her heart. Then Frank gets a small movie role, his big break, and leaves, promising to return. Meanwhile, Nadine has become pregnant with Frank’s child, but the baby is stillborn and only Nadine, Aunt Amelia, and Uncle Hamp know of this chapter in her life. Nadine finally moves to New York, accompanied by her dancer friend Deni Hansen. Babes in the woods, they escape many unsavory and even dangerous characters but eventually life improves. One of Nadine’s guides is Father Benjamin Vincent Dunlap, a paraplegic gay priest—she is never without wise counsel. She winds up in the world of the theater and meets, and marries, Colin Bennett, a successful director. They have a loft in SoHo. Life is good. Then comes a letter that threatens to smash their comfortable existence to smithereens. There follows an audacious plot resolution, but the reader should be spellbound as it unfolds. Then the expected denouement wraps things up nicely, or almost. Edwards writes superbly and the plot moves briskly. The narrative offers evocative descriptions of both the historic Lowcountry (“From the marsh, an egret fluttered its wings in slow motion and lifted into the air. The smaller birds, smartly tucked in the shade of the palmettos, called out to whoever listened”) and glamorous New York (“Sometimes the city just popped out of the darkness like a 3-D movie. From this vantage point, Manhattan looked like a fairyland, the place Dorothy and her friends were searching for”). And there are juicy subplots, such as Deni’s fall and redemption. What starts out as chick lit turns delightfully surprising.
A bit heavy on wish fulfillment, this vivid novel is still a satisfying read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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