Sort of a men’s weeper, but funny, sexy, and thoughtful.
Easterbrook turns to the novel again (This Magic Moment, not reviewed) after some serious nonfiction (Beside Still Waters, 1998, etc.) and does quite well: involuntary time-travel to his better past self nearly queers a very big deal for a hotshot lawyer.
Jaded and deeply unhappy attorney Carter Morris, whose ridiculous but apparently legal solution to the problems of the fashion chain Value Neutral is about to rain big-big money on himself and the openly amoral law firm in which he is a partner, has begun to scare the daylights out of his colleagues. At a succession of critical moments leading to the consummation of the super settlement, Carter keeps vanishing. Literally. Negotiations with Value Neutral have taken him to the city and scene of his youthful triumphs as a Galahad in the 1960s peace movement, and he keeps bumping into himself—as a young man. In very confused pre-incarnations, he’s continually popping back to particular Carters, beginning with the sweaty, baseball-playing prepubescent Carter and working his way through to the Carter of the great moment when he saved a huge rally from governmental interference, met Walter Cronkite, and possibly set a real-life future senator on his political path. To greatly complicate things, the land of his past, unlike Narnia, does not return him to the present with only a few minutes gone missing. Instead, he’s returned a very inconvenient one or two days late from wherever he was supposed to be, usually a vital meeting. Fortunately, each absence, however much it may enrage his partners, seems to make an admiring Value Neutral voluntarily cough up ever more millions. The retro-trips become increasingly poignant as Carter reviews failed relationships with his childhood pal, his brother, and Jayne Ann, the lost love of his life. Will he reclaim his ideals? Will he patch things up with everybody, including himself? Will he keep the money?
Sort of a men’s weeper, but funny, sexy, and thoughtful.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28647-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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