Literary feminist readers will relish the smart, taut writing and terrifically tactile first-person narration.
Debut from Lancelotta (stories: Here in the World, 2000) takes a gruesomely fascinating glimpse into the bruised psyche of a Baltimore woman burned out by a rough-going love affair.
At 30, jewelry-shop employee Martha is unambitious professionally and sexually; she wants nothing of her realtor lover Edward but his desirous presence. The two meet in bars, then return to Martha’s charmless inner-city apartment to indulge in nightly shenanigans only hinted at in oblique descriptions. Martha has rejected the conventional path expected of her by her timorous mother, somnambulant father, and good-girl younger sister Carly: she refuses to be a wife, mother, and possessor of a suburban home. Yet her last-ditch affair with Edward has “scraped [her] raw,” and she flees in emotional self-survival to begin a stark new life, opening up a jewelry store in a small town on the Gulf Coast. Lancelotta skillfully moves back and forth in time, mingling Martha’s Baltimore memories—visiting a carnival with her father, staggering home on countless nights following sex with one high-school loser after another, enduring grievous scenes with her jealously resentful sister (who meets and falls for Edward)—with an account of her pristine new existence living next door to a 22-year-old widow and her razor-witted mother-in-law. Martha is a character who beautifully succeeds in 3-D by virtue of operating in opposition to everything around her: her mother’s secretive past, her sister’s conflicted jealousy, the inability of the men she sleeps with to recognize her intuitive intelligence. “You do not want what you've been taught to want,” Martha recognizes with fatal satisfaction, and this is both a blessing and a curse. Lancelotta nails the spirit-sinking landscapes of Baltimore and a no-name southern town with a scintillating precision of detail.
Literary feminist readers will relish the smart, taut writing and terrifically tactile first-person narration.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-58243-114-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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