Good fun, good writing, and strong characters keep this high-wire plot aloft.
A dead woman betrayed by her younger lover takes gleeful, violent revenge.
“Yes, we are legion. Yes, we are a pain in the ass.” Joanna DeAngelis has died young of cancer, and she has died wrong—instead of connecting one last time with her loving daughters and faithful poodle, instead of departing peacefully with her affairs in order, she has spent her last days on Earth scrolling furiously through her Twitter feed for news of her one-time lover, a Columbia professor who abandoned her in the middle of a cancer relapse for Trudi Mink, celebrity dermatologist and social media queen, a woman whose “nail color was so heavily tweeted it became the Pantone color of the year.” “What the hell,” Joanna exclaims, upon entering the crowded, unpleasant realm of the spirits. “I pictured something out of a Nancy Meyers movie. I follow a light through a meadow, up a slate walk to a many-windowed house with white sofas, and…all the dogs I’ve had to put down greet me and frisk around me.” But instead she joins “the unresolved dead,” those unable to stop wanting what they cannot have, doomed to haunt their old neighborhoods, to orbit rather than rise. Her new mantra: “Make Ned pay.” In this debut novel, Gangi has a blast with her undead harpy character, who dive-bombs her own memorial service, trashes Dr. Trudi’s penthouse, and makes Ned into a social media pariah by running him through an obscene Mick Jagger dance routine in what used to be their favorite bar, where she finds him stepping out on Dr. Trudi with a Columbia undergrad. As Ned comes to fully regret the mistake he can never undo, Joanna’s daughters, one of whom was drunk and cheating herself at the moment of her mother’s death, struggle to find their ways in a motherless world. Or sort of motherless, anyway.
Good fun, good writing, and strong characters keep this high-wire plot aloft.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-11056-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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