Eye-catching Victoria Gotti, daughter of Godfather John Gotti, debuts as an accomplished thriller writer. Does Gotti's first novel feature her ties to her father? Well, John Gotti is here, but only psychically, in the form of two characters in conflict with each other. In DeCiccio's Restaurant on Boston's wharf, union strongman Joseph Sessio (read: John Gotti) is shot twice through the head. The power vacuum is filled by distinguished Senator Frank Morgan of Massachusetts (read: John Gotti), who was ushered into prominence long years before with union money derived in part from his father's old ties with the union as a bootlegger (the union moved his booze). The heroine is blond Taylor Brooke, a serious young lawyer with a pricey Boston firm who is tapped to defend Tommy Washington, the 19-year-old black busboy accused of shooting Sessio. But word is out that the rubout was set up by Sessio's son Mike, who wanted to take over his father's empire. Taylor finds herself befriended by the handsome, sensual, art-fancying Sessio, who tells her that he doesn't believe Washington killed his father. Thus, the murdered man's son is helping the defending attorney get his falsely accused father's murderer acquitted, although this points the finger only more strongly at himself. Taylor's background: Her mother was abandoned by her married lover, Frank Morgan (before he became senator), then became the alcoholic victim of a vehicular homicide. Taylor was raised in a Catholic girls' orphanage in Fall River, married and then fled from an abusive husband, assumed a new identity in Boston and, her career secretly underwritten by her guilt-ridden father, became a lawyer. Now dad hopes to mend fences. But bad people and a car-bomber are out to kill Taylor, as is her knife-bearing husband. Surprisingly effective throughout, until the parricidal final pages, which fly by too fast for credibility even for melodrama. Flashy but powerful.
Pub Date: March 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86323-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
Part of Hoffman's great talent is her wonderful ability to sift some magic into unlikely places, such as a latter-day Levittown (Seventh Heaven, 1990) or a community of divorcÇes in Florida (Turtle Moon, 1992). But in her 11th novel, a tale of love and life in New England, it feels as if the lid flew off the jar of magic—it blinds you with fairy dust. Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned sisters, only 13 months apart, but such opposites in appearance and temperament that they're dubbed ``Day and Night'' by the two old aunts who are raising them. Sally is steady, Gillian is jittery, and each is wary, in her own way, about the frightening pull of love. They've seen the evidence for themselves in the besotted behavior of the women who call on the two aunts for charms and potions to help them with their love lives. The aunts grow herbs, make mysterious brews, and have a houseful of—what else?—black cats. The two girls grow up to flee (in opposite directions) from the aunts, the house, and the Massachusetts town where they've long been shunned by their superstitious schoolmates. What they can't escape is magic, which follows them, sometimes in a particularly malevolent form. And, ultimately, no matter how hard they dodge it, they have to recognize that love always catches up with you. As always, Hoffman's writing has plenty of power. Her best sentences are like incantations—they won't let you get away. But it's just too hard to believe the magic here, maybe because it's not so much practical magic as it is predictable magic, with its crones and bubbling cauldrons and hearts of animals pierced with pins. Sally and Gillian are appealing characters, but, finally, their story seems as murky as one of the aunts' potions—and just as hard to swallow. Too much hocus-pocus, not enough focus. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Pub Date: June 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14055-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK TO SCREEN
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.
A star-crossed romance captures the turmoil of pre-revolutionary Iran in Seraji’s debut.
From the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, life looks pretty good to 17-year-old Pasha Shahed and his friend Ahmed. They’re bright, funny and good-looking; they’re going to graduate from high school in a year; and they’re in love with a couple of the neighborhood girls. But all is not idyllic. At first the girls scarcely know the boys are alive, and one of them, Zari, is engaged to Doctor—not actually a doctor but an exceptionally gifted and politically committed young Iranian. In this neighborhood, the Shah is a subject of contempt rather than veneration, and residents fear SAVAK, the state’s secret police force, which operates without any restraint. Pasha, the novel’s narrator and prime dreamer, focuses on two key periods in his life: the summer and fall of 1973, when his life is going rather well, and the winter of 1974, when he’s incarcerated in a grim psychiatric hospital. Among the traumatic events he relates are the sudden arrest, imprisonment and presumed execution of Doctor. Pasha feels terrible because he fears he might have inadvertently been responsible for SAVAK having located Doctor’s hiding place; he also feels guilty because he’s always been in love with Zari. She makes a dramatic political statement, setting herself on fire and sending Pasha into emotional turmoil. He is both devastated and further worried when the irrepressible Ahmed also seems to come under suspicion for political activity. Pasha turns bitterly against religion, raising the question of God’s existence in a world in which the bad guys seem so obviously in the ascendant. Yet the badly scarred Zari assures him, “Things will change—they always do.”
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-451-22681-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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