Lively examination of the intricate interplay between identity and culture.
Marsot’s impressive debut examines sex and love in Paris—for once neither romanticized nor sentimentalized.
When an affair in Los Angeles ends unhappily, Anna sets off for the City of Lights without much of a plan. Though living free of charge in an apartment owned by her aunt (who’s conveniently not using it), Anna soon realizes she needs a little steady income. She translates a trial chapter from an anonymous novel and learns through the author’s agent Bernard that “Monsieur X” is pleased; from then on, Bernard periodically meets Anna to give her more chapters to translate. While it’s not quite clear whether this is a novel or a memoir—she’s been told the author is a prominent writer who doesn’t want his identity known—the text is quite clearly erotic, and Anna finds herself both intrigued and titillated. Guided by an old friend, she goes to a sex club in a seamy quarter of Paris; shortly thereafter, she meets artistic, bohemian Olivier and embarks on a passionate affair. Just as Anna searches for le mot juste in her translation, she tries to find adequate words to convey what’s happening with her emotions. She discovers that there are four endings to Monsieur X’s novel, some more satisfying than others, and she wonders about the trajectory of her relationship with Olivier. “I just want a proper ending,” she tells a friend, and that goes for the romance as well as the manuscript. Although she has dual French-American citizenship, Anna learns much through her encounters with Parisians. Her friend Antoine, for example, says, “You are more open, we are more reserved. We like riddles, you like answers. We are more interested in the game than the outcome.”
Lively examination of the intricate interplay between identity and culture.Pub Date: April 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-167366-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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