The capable, attractive, widowed, filthy-rich head of emergency medicine at a Manhattan hospital battles a serial murderer, a mugger, nocturnal intruders, recurring nightmares, and departmentally threatening budget cuts. And, of course, there are boyfriend problems. Spruill also wrote Painkiller, 1990; Paradox Planet, 1988, etc. Her townhouse is on the right side of the park; her housekeeper is a trusted friend; her daughters are future Nobel laureates; her lover has the cleverest relaxation tricks; and she expects to inherit a fortune—but life is no bed of roses for Amy St. Clair, M.D.. Dr. Clair keeps having the same goofy dream, and while she's having the goofy dream, she's pretty sure somebody's bypassing the burglar alarm and wandering through the house. At work, meanwhile, there's this problem with otherwise healthy, tall, upper-middle-aged, blue-eyed bankers who drop dead in Amy's emergency room—the very same emergency room targeted for elimination by a heartless hospital administration, even though Amy's otherwise healthy, tall, upper-middle-aged, blue-eyed banker father has brought millions and millions of dollars to the institution. And talk about an eerie coincidence: the daughter of one of the rich dead banker victims turns out to have the same creepy nightmares as Amy. Can Amy find help from handsome staff psychologist and paramour Tom Hart, Ph.D? He's done such great things for her brain-injured brother. Or should she turn to new staff surgeon Dr. Otis ``Campy'' Camp? Twenty years ago, ``Campy'' was the love of her life, but then he was swallowed up by Vietnam. He never wrote, but he's still quite handsome. Slick and readable, but despite all the menace, there's not a real chill anywhere. Readers are likely to find themselves counting coincidences when they should have been too scared to notice.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-06910-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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A group of strangers who live near each other in London become fast friends after writing their deepest secrets in a shared notebook.
Julian Jessop, a septuagenarian artist, is bone-crushingly lonely when he starts “The Authenticity Project”—as he titles a slim green notebook—and begins its first handwritten entry questioning how well people know each other in his tiny corner of London. After 15 years on his own mourning the loss of his beloved wife, he begins the project with the aim that whoever finds the little volume when he leaves it in a cafe will share their true self with their own entry and then pass the volume on to a stranger. The second person to share their inner selves in the notebook’s pages is Monica, 37, owner of a failing cafe and a former corporate lawyer who desperately wants to have a baby. From there the story unfolds, as the volume travels to Thailand and back to London, seemingly destined to fall only into the hands of people—an alcoholic drug addict, an Australian tourist, a social media influencer/new mother, etc.—who already live clustered together geographically. This is a glossy tale where difficulties and addictions appear and are overcome, where lies are told and then forgiven, where love is sought and found, and where truths, once spoken, can set you free. Secondary characters, including an interracial gay couple, appear with their own nuanced parts in the story. The message is strong, urging readers to get off their smartphones and social media and live in the real, authentic world—no chain stores or brands allowed here—making friends and forming a real-life community and support network. And is that really a bad thing?
An enjoyable, cozy novel that touches on tough topics.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7861-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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