Despite the perils the reckless heroes and heroines court, all three stories have at least moderately happy endings—though...
Indefatigable pop sexologist Bright has corralled three varied contributions in a sequel to Three the Hard Way (2004) that could mark a new annual series.
Beware of what you wish for, because in these three tales of sexual wishes fulfilled, desire can be a harsh master. Given that common premise, the stories couldn’t be more different. Eric Albert’s “Charmed, I’m Sure,” in which David, a naïve city-slicker tired of mating rituals, pays a witch he meets at a party $4,000 for 15 hours of power to get any potential partner to do anything he wants. It’s basically an extended joke in which David’s all-too-successful attempts to have women at his beck and call create predictable but increasingly wild complications. Greta Christina’s “Bending” asks what happens when Dallas, a young woman who gets off on only one sexual position—being taken from behind while she’s bent over—finally has the chance, after years of on-again-off-again fulfillment, to sate herself. The result is a surprisingly moving odyssey of exhaustiveness and exhaustion. And Jill Soloway’s “Jodi K,” whose heroine lusts after her girlfriend’s father even as she’s going through all the moves of high-school dating, is an anthropologically precise dissection of a particular (yet frighteningly general-seeming) teenaged narrator who sounds like Eloise in heat. Though Jodi helpfully points out the good parts of her amusingly inarticulate saga in advance, readers intent on the good parts alone may want to skip it entirely, since it contains less sex than most Cosmo fiction, a distinction that sets it miles apart from Albert and Christina.
Despite the perils the reckless heroes and heroines court, all three stories have at least moderately happy endings—though the plausible chance that they won’t shows you how far erotic fiction has come since Bright first hung out her editorial shingle.Pub Date: July 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-4550-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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