In the second fiction to appear here by noted Filipino writer JosÇ (Three Filipino Women, 1992), the sordid deathbed confession of a local tycoon is as much a portrait of a corrupt and sinful society as a personal mea culpa. Near death, Don Carlos Cobello decides to tell his life story as ``a form of expiation, perhaps, or atonement.'' A mestizo who can trace his lineage back to Castille, a sugar baron, and to a member of the Filipino elite, Carlos has lived a privileged life: His inherited wealth enabled him to indulge both his interests and his appetites. His business acumen made him politically powerful, and his generosity to the government was rewarded by an ambassadorship. But this glittering life is, on closer examination, tawdry and sad. Though scrupulously attentive to details of place and time, Cobello is really concerned with setting down his sexual history, which in its self-absorption, greed, and corruption is a metaphor for the behavior of the Filipino elite, who suppress the population and squander national resources while amassing great personal fortunes. At age 14, he became his older sister Corito's lover—a relationship that endured for the rest of his life; next he seduced a young servant, Severina, whom the family then dismissed, and by high school, a period that coincided with the Japanese Occupation, he was enjoying the women in the brothel his father owned. His business achievements are secondary to his recollections of seductions, local and international, but money doesn't buy everything: The daughter born to Corito is sickly, he himself is syphilitic, and Delfin, a son Severina apparently bore to him, is more interested in helping the poor than in running the family business. Ultimately unrepentant, our sinner blames fate or witchcraft, not himself, for his sins. More a carefully drawn up rap sheet for a whole class than one rather tawdry sinner, but on its own terms illuminating and certainly heartfelt.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42018-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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