Most alive when it focuses on the supposedly mousy twin.
First-time novelist Walsh uneasily combines a romantic adventure about a missing dagger with the psychological story of an adolescent sibling rivalry.
In Betheny, N.Y., 26-year-old Maeve buys a Javanese dagger called a keris at an auction because it reminds her of the one she lost during her childhood in Maine. Back then, she was a redheaded, saxophone-playing musical prodigy inseparably close to her identical twin sister Moira. But after Moira was hit by a car nine years ago, Maeve put away her sax and become a bleached-blonde workaholic professor. Soon after her purchase, Maeve begins receiving mysterious messages. A Javanese stranger wants her to meet him in Rome to discuss the keris. Encouraged by her father and her childhood friend Kit, Maeve heads to the Eternal City, where she is met by Noel, a best friend from Betheny who has been living in Paris. Together they search for the elusive keris expert. Interspersed with Maeve’s present story is a narration by 16-year-old Moira. Less adventurous and musically talented than her twin, Moira is an engagingly troubled teen with a dreamy romantic crush on Kit’s older brother Ian. He has a crush on Maeve, and when he mistakes Moira for Maeve one day, she doesn’t correct him. They begin a secret romantic/sexual relationship, and Moira’s confused emotions—envy, guilt, passion and regret as she deceives the boy she loves and usurps her sister’s place—are delineated with heart-wrenching believability. In contrast, Maeve’s Roman adventures with Noel are heavily plotted and artificial. Seeking the keris expert, the pair encounter danger in all the expected places. They gradually admit their love, but it’s lukewarm even at its most passionate. In a bit of spiritual hokum, Maeve discovers that the keris has powers that not only save her physical life but also unite her spirit with her sister’s.
Most alive when it focuses on the supposedly mousy twin.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-46157-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
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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