An engaging tale, deftly crafted and plotted, with plenty of Irish whimsy, charm, and blarney.
Shea forsakes her usual subject, Polish-Americans in Massachusetts (Around Again, 2001, etc.), to portray a single American woman taking on a new life in a small Irish village.
Narrator Sophie, single and 30-ish, comes to the westernmost spot in Ireland because her good friend and former coworker Gina thinks a trip there will help both of them get over losing their jobs. But the day after they arrive in Booley for a three-month visit, Gina heads back to the US, declaring it’s not the place she needs but insisting that her friend remain. Soon Sophie is one of the locals. She gets a job in Liam’s craftshop, reorganizes the entire store, makes bracelets that are a big hit, and befriends all the villagers. Liam is still recovering from his love affair with Finola O’ Flynn, whose name is on the storefront. Finola left Booley three years ago with a new love, and Liam has never been the same. Neither has most of Booley, Sophie soon learns: everyone she meets, from Noel the weaver to elderly retired farmer Joe, recalls the wonders Finola worked. Sophie soon finds herself taking on Finola’s identity as customers in the shop, mostly tourists, assume that must be her name. She had planned to move in with traveling salesman Charlie when she went home, but—in what she concedes is an amazing coincidence—Charlie’s hitherto unacknowledged wife and two daughters stop by the shop on their way to London. Sophie’s broken heart is soon cured by Liam, and she begins to plan on settling in Booley for good after a quick trip home. But then Finola suddenly returns the day before Sophie must leave. Stateside, Sophie tries to forget, but a promise to old Joe brings her back to the village, where Finola has some revelations of her own.
An engaging tale, deftly crafted and plotted, with plenty of Irish whimsy, charm, and blarney.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-0377-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Unsettling in its depiction of sadistic sex acts and hauntingly sad in its portrayal of a lonely soul tittering on the edge...
Posthumous work by the unflinching Lewis (The Second Suspect, 1998, etc.) offers a chilling glimpse inside the head of a young prostitute forsaken by family and lovers.
Living in an unnamed suburb in the well-appointed house of her absent parents, who seem to care not at all what she does, first-person narrator Nina (her professional name) begins to turn tricks in the parking lot of the local train station. Details emerge in nonchalant fashion, described in a deadpan voice. Nina has had some experience with drugs, and she’s been locked up, possibly for psychiatric reasons. Her actions, which at first seem innocent or helpless, soon turn needy and ugly. Then Nina meets the customer who decides her fate, a rough guy who takes her home to his fancy house (“going up the driveway seemed to take longer than getting there”) to meet his good-looking wife (“nothing suburban or matronly going on, which was a decided relief”). Rough trade turns to horrible as Nina is forced to witness the man’s sadistic treatment of his spouse before he turns on her. Shockingly, Nina comes back for more, motivated by true human sympathy for the wife. Ingrid’s self-loathing prompts Nina to stay with her and even to suggest that she try to make a break and get away. The two women begin a love affair that stirs the apparently influential husband to vengeance; he has Nina arrested, then incarcerated in solitary confinement, which probably would have lasted forever if not for the loving intervention her counselor and therapist, Beth. The story constantly piques your expectations, but the denouement is never assured, though you’re sure it will be gruesome and brutal. Despite her penchant for slurry colloquial sentence fragments, Lewis is an enormously compelling writer: astute, risky, and unapologetic.
Unsettling in its depiction of sadistic sex acts and hauntingly sad in its portrayal of a lonely soul tittering on the edge of emotional oblivion.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2004
ISBN: 1-85242-456-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sequel and conclusion to Rice's The Witching Hour (1990) shows Rice both at her best and at her hackiest. Volume One brought forth the Mayfair Witches, an incestuous family in New Orleans' steamy Garden District, headed by supersurgeon Rowan Mayfair, who is putting some of the family's seven-and-a-half billion into the Mayfair Medical Institute. At that novel's end, Rowan had given birth to an "entity" on the living-room rug that, assuming human shape, had nearly killed husband Michael in the swimming pool, then abducted Rowan. Now the evil being—which looks like Durer's Christ and has been using witches in the Mayfair line to have itself reborn after dying time and again since the earliest days of the Reformation in Scotland— is skipping about Europe while trying to breed with Rowan and give birth to a female demon. But these porny pages don't arrive until we wade through 200 tediously undramatic sheets of dialogue filler quite lacking in storytelling oomph—though we are treated to teenygenius Mona Mayfair's seduction of the recovering Michael. All this is a case of background detail turning story into tapestry. Once Rice plunges us into Rowan's long rape, two miscarriages, and at last the birth of Emaleth, sister/wife for Rowan's demonic son Lasher, the novel lights up with rocket blast. How will Rowan escape her tyrant son, whose endless suckling and inseminating keeps her constantly orgasmic and horrified? But pigging out on Rowan's plight takes up only about 200 pages all told, and then more background filler—well, the novel's huge mythic underpinning- -dims our spirits, although the story of Uncle Julien, as told by Julien's ghost to Michael, dances nicely. Too much Rice-A-Roni, but addicts will lick the pot.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41295-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
BOOK TO SCREEN
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