Powerfully despairing, Graham Greenelike tale of romance and alienation in the blasted African bush, from our foremost chronicler of Washington's faceless bureaucracy and the lives it so blithely consumes (Last Train from Berlin, 1994, etc.). As the Vietnam War makes a mess of US foreign policy in Southeast Asia, footloose American foreign-service careerist Hugh Mathews finds himself transferred from Eden-like, pre-invasion Lebanon to a grim, gloomy diplomatic compound in the former Belgian Congo. A bachelor with little patience for political frippery (he likens diplomacy to ``an old whore trying to remember when she'd been a virgin''), he's resigned to terminal futility—until he falls for Blakely Ogden, the bronzed, blond wife of the embassy's insipid consul, Jeffrey. Childless and stifled by a loveless marriage, Blakely confides her fascination with tribal masks and other artifacts of African culture. Hoping to experience something more than the sublime ennui of diplomatic protocol, and perhaps discover some interesting antiques for his friend, Mathews begins to run pointless errands in the blighted, inhospitable countryside with fellow loner Ken McAuliffe, a burned-out idealist who ``like most incorrigibly honest people, had no sense of the mystery in himself.'' After a passionate affair with Mathews, Blakely flees her lover and her husband, leaving no forwarding address. Then McAuliffe quits the service and is blown to bits by a land mine while helping refugees escape, and Mathews finds himself banished for his misdemeanors- -among them the discovery that his local drinking buddies are outlaw revolutionaries. He ends up back in Washington with a dull desk job. Overwhelmed by a life of so much futility, Mathews is suddenly reborn when he stumbles on Blakely again. Together, the two finally experience what passes for contentment in the rustic Virginia woods. Thick with bilious resentment and impotent rage: a trenchant, eloquently crafted drama of lost souls who find salvation where they least expect it.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8050-4425-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining page-turner.
Terri Rayburn is devastated that her perfect man belongs to someone else, but once Nate Taggert realizes that Terri's the one for him, her complicated past still stands in the way of their being together.
Terri is attracted to Nate the moment she lays eyes on him, and soon they fall into an easy partnership at the Virginia lake resort she runs with her father. Nate is upfront about being engaged to the mayor’s daughter, Stacy, but she’s in Europe for a few weeks, and it quickly becomes clear to Terri that Nate and Stacy aren’t a great match. However, Terri, whose mother left when she was 2, has always had a problematic relationship with the citizens of Summer Hill. Since Leslie disappeared, the town gossip has made sure everyone remembers her as a promiscuous vixen, a label which tainted Terri as she got older and made her look like a problem when, as Nate begins to understand, she was really a victim. It’s clear to everyone around them that they are falling in love, but even as Nate realizes it himself, Terri is adamant that they can’t be together. She won’t steal him from the popular Stacy because it would mean she’d never be able to live in Summer Hill, and she won’t abandon her father. Deveraux spins an intriguing and unorthodox romance, continuing her Summer Hill branch of the Taggert/Montgomery series with two characters who have some unique, interesting obstacles in their paths and navigate through them with secrets uncovered and old wounds healed. The story is well plotted, though Nate is unnecessarily oblivious sometimes and the book takes an unexpected swing into romantic suspense territory in the last quarter. The solved mystery resolves Nate and Terri’s conflict, though the villain’s motivations seem a little cartoonish.
An entertaining page-turner.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-5124-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
While Liv’s more pedestrian story is less romantic than Sophie’s and far less nuanced, Moyes is a born storyteller who makes...
The newest novel by Moyes (Me Before You, 2012, etc.) shares its title with a fictional painting that serves as catalyst in linking two love stories, one set in occupied France during World War I, the other in 21st-century London.
In a French village in 1916, Sophie is helping the family while her husband, Édouard, an artist who studied with Matisse, is off fighting. Sophie’s pluck in standing up to the new German kommandant in the village draws his interest. An art lover, he also notices Édouard's portrait of Sophie, which captures her essence (and the kommandant's adoration). Arranging to dine regularly at Sophie’s inn with his men, he begins a cat-and-mouse courtship. She resists. But learning that Édouard is being held in a particularly harsh “reprisal” camp, she must decide what she will sacrifice for Édouard’s freedom. The rich portrayals of Sophie, her family and neighbors hauntingly capture wartime’s gray morality. Cut to 2006 and a different moral puzzle. Thirty-two-year-old widow Liv has been struggling financially and emotionally since her husband David’s sudden death. She meets Paul in a bar after her purse is stolen. The divorced father is the first man she’s been drawn to since she was widowed. They spend a glorious night together, but after noticing Édouard's portrait of Sophie on Liv’s wall, he rushes away with no explanation. In fact, Paul is as smitten as Liv, but his career is finding and returning stolen art to the rightful owners. Usually the artwork was confiscated by Germans during World War II, not WWI, but Édouard's descendants recently hired him to find this very painting. Liv is not about to part with it; David bought it on their honeymoon because the portrait reminded him of Liv. In love, Liv and Paul soon find themselves on opposite sides of a legal battle.
While Liv’s more pedestrian story is less romantic than Sophie’s and far less nuanced, Moyes is a born storyteller who makes it impossible not to care about her heroines.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-02661-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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