Maudlin, melodramatic and predictable, but the author knows how to make her characters’ suffering wrench readers’ hearts.
Family-damage specialist Greenwood (Two Rivers, 2009, etc.) tackles a really big trauma—coping with a loved one’s death from anorexia.
The Masons are floundering. Successful novelist Sam and his actress-turned-caterer wife Mena have stopped making love and communicate with strained politeness. Their 16-year-old son Finn is into drink, drugs and general misbehavior. In desperation, Sam drives the family to spend the summer at the Vermont lake cottage where they vacationed until Finn and twin sister Franny turned 12. Although the author teases readers for many pages with coy hints about the cause of Franny’s death seven months earlier, it’s obvious early on that the budding ballerina had an eating disorder. In Vermont, the surviving Masons individually deal with their grief and guilt. Sam researches a book on a starvation experiment and tries an herbal remedy for his lack of sex drive. Mena cooks platters of her Greek specialties, gets a starring role in a community theater production of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love and carries on a flirtation with her costar. Finn is angry and sullen until he begins a friendship with Alice, whose father is in prison for beating her mother. (The sweet 15-year-old reminds Mena of Franny, a plot point that will prove significant.) Finn worries about running out of his herbal crutch until he begins tending a field of marijuana that Alice has stumbled on; the sensory and emotional immediacy in these scenes make them the novel’s most memorable. Meanwhile, troubled Dale Edwards, who has been obsessed with Sam since she read his novels as a teenager, decides to seek him out. (She figures out his location with clues garnered from Franny’s personal website and various Internet searches.) Dale’s eventual arrival, after a road trip during which her mental state unravels, provides the external catalyst for the Masons’ healing.
Maudlin, melodramatic and predictable, but the author knows how to make her characters’ suffering wrench readers’ hearts.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7582-2878-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
A captivating and uplifting tale about the essence of self-reliance and the unsung benefits of modern families.
A middle-aged woman who was adopted as a baby searches for her birth family as she simultaneously struggles to care for her own chronically ill daughter.
Ten-year-old Kylie Anderson suffers from food allergies, joint pain, headaches, skin irritations, and other symptoms of a mysterious chronic illness. Her mother, Ally, is at her wits' end attempting to adequately respond to her daughter’s ailments. Ally and her husband, Matt, have also recently separated, torn apart by the emotional and financial strain of caring for a sick child. When a new doctor tells Ally that Kylie’s disease might be genetic, Ally accepts that Kylie’s condition necessitates a genealogy search even though she never wanted to know about her own past. With the minimal effort of completing an at-home DNA test, Ally quickly locates a biological family member who lives less than an hour away. Unfortunately, Ally’s adoptive mother, Sophie, can’t stand the idea of reconnecting with the family that gave Ally away. As Ally attempts to piece together a medical history for Kylie without destroying her special relationship with Sophie, she also struggles to understand her feelings for her now-estranged husband. The couple dances around each other, worried for their daughter and nostalgic for what they’ve lost with each other. Circumstances grow increasingly complicated, and Ally must determine how to best move forward as a daughter, a mother, and a wife. Through Ally’s complex journey toward self-determination, this engaging, plot-driven tale examines what it really means to be part of a family. With the book told entirely from Ally’s perspective, the self-deprecating, girlfriend-y tone will draw readers right into Ally’s inner circle as she wrestles with questions about parenting, friendship, love, and loss. Replete with details about conventional and alternative medicine as well as quaintly humorous small-town moments of school board elections and run-ins with neighbors, the novel is engrossing throughout. Moments of self-doubt and embarrassment abound, but they are tempered by messages of hope and palpable love that hit just the right note.
A captivating and uplifting tale about the essence of self-reliance and the unsung benefits of modern families.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0643-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A quirky period fairy tale laced with female networks and glamorous gowns.
In this witty little gem of a tale, reminiscent of Barbara Pym and Muriel Spark, three women working at a posh department store see their lives turn important corners while a fourth lends a helping hand.
“At the end of a hot November day Miss Baines and Mrs. Williams of the Ladies’ Frocks Department at Goode’s were complaining to each other while they changed out of their black frocks before going home.” The opening sentence of Australian novelist St John’s (A Pure Clear Light, 1996, etc.) first novel, originally published in 1993, instantly transports readers back to a more genteel era. The setting is Sydney, the era post–World War II, and the cast of characters a mix of middle- and working-class locals and bohemian refugees. Teenager Lesley Miles, an aspiring poet who prefers to be called Lisa, lands a Christmas job at Goode’s while waiting to see if she has passed the Leaving Certificate exam and qualified for a university place. Employed partly in Ladies’ Cocktail, she is also seconded to Model Gowns, where she meets Magda ("no one could even try to pronounce her frightful Continental surname"), a formidable, sensuous, shrewd figure whose social gatherings will introduce Lisa and Fay Baines to a new world of sophistication and possibility. Patty Williams, meanwhile, is the character with the most intractable problem, namely her husband, Frank, whose dim libido leaves her despairing at the unlikelihood of children. St John, who died in 2006, has created a meld of New World naiveté and old European wisdom, its simplicity punctured with enduring savvy: “The point is they are happy together now. It is the only possible beginning. The middle and end must take care of themselves as they always do. Or not, as the case may be.”
A quirky period fairy tale laced with female networks and glamorous gowns.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3408-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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