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MOURNING GLORY

Glib trash, and a rather sad middle-aged male fantasy of a younger woman’s desire for an older man.

A crude attempt at romance from Adler (The Ties That Bind, 1994, etc.), this time about a Catholic divorcée on the skids who ensnares and then falls in love with a rich Jewish widower.

Thirty-eight-year-old Grace can barely support herself and troubled sixteen-year-old daughter Jackie working at the makeup counter of the Saks Fifth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida. When Grace gets fired, the executive doing the firing coolly suggests she look for a rich, aging husband instead of a new job—a Jewish widower, the ex-boss suggests, because Jewish men make good husbands. At first Grace is outraged, but she needs money and finds herself attending Jewish funerals. She sets her sights on Sam, a business magnate whose wife has died of cancer. In his early 60s, Sam is fit, good-looking, and well-heeled. Grace insinuates herself into his life by pretending to have done charity work with his wife, and he accepts her offer to give away the dead woman’s extensive wardrobe. Soon she is at the house daily, sorting designer labels, sipping champagne with Sam, and having the best sex of her life. While charming him with her apparent honesty, Grace is increasingly guilt-stricken about the web of lies she's spun about her past. She doesn’t know that Sam is also hiding a guilty secret: his beloved wife’s frigidity sent him to prostitutes. Then Grace discovers that his wife secretly had a lover. As Grace falls in love with her Jewish “mark,” she tries to give moral guidance to Jackie, now under the spell of a vicious, anti-Semitic skinhead. Can Sam, a kind and caring person as well as a fabulous lover, save not only Grace but her daughter from evil? Will he still love Grace even after all secrets are exposed?

Glib trash, and a rather sad middle-aged male fantasy of a younger woman’s desire for an older man.

Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2001

ISBN: 1-57566-898-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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