by Joanna Hershon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2003
A moving tale that goes on far too long: it ends up sounding as sad and rambling as a drunk’s confession.
A wistful family portrait by Hershon (Swimming, 2001) follows two Long Island children through adolescence to adulthood as they struggle to make sense of their parents’ unhappy marriage.
No matter what Tolstoy thought, unhappy families are made miserable by pretty much the same things—money, drugs, or sex. Sometimes madness clouds the picture, too, and this seems like a real possibility in the case of the Greens of Long Island. Alan and Charlotte are a suave, well-educated couple (he a neurobiologist, she an artist) who raised two fine children (son August, daughter Alice) in their tastefully decorated colonial house. Or, at least, they started to: from the time the kids could make their own breakfasts, Charlotte went traveling, by herself, on vaguely defined (and often unannounced) “business trips” that usually lasted several months or more. Alan, unhappy about these disappearances but powerless to keep Charlotte home, retreated into his work and often spent twelve hours a day at the lab. He became even more distant after Charlotte died under mysterious circumstances when the children were still in their teens. Given their start in life, it’s not a surprise that neither August nor Alice fits in comfortably with the suburban world around them. August left home early, became a surfer, and traveled the world looking for the perfect wave; Alice moved to Manhattan and became a kind of professional grad student. Their father’s death, now, brings them together for the first time in 15 years, but, nevertheless, August can’t stay put long and flees without an explanation the day after the funeral. Incensed, Alice tracks him to Mexico (where he’s living as a kind of beachfront squatter) and tries to learn what he’s hiding from. Instead, she learns what drove her mother away nearly two decades before.
A moving tale that goes on far too long: it ends up sounding as sad and rambling as a drunk’s confession.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-43915-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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
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by Nicholas Sparks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 13, 2015
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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