A bighearted novel about finding fulfillment in the third act.
A retiree’s life upends when she learns about her husband’s infidelity.
Andrea Parker recently began stepping away from the marketing business she founded, leaving it in her sons’ hands. The 69-year-old spends her newfound free time with her husband, Jed, and working at a consignment shop, Sweet Repeats, she started with two of her besties Jeannie and Melanie. Just as she settles into this life, her granddaughter Brooke bursts in with earth-shattering news: Jed has been publicly flirting with a younger woman on Facebook. Jed, 74, sending what he thought were private messages, carried on a full conversation with the woman, Renee, on her viewable-by-all Facebook page. Brooke, and, later, family and friends, discover the humiliating exchange. Although Jed convinces Andi it was only flirting, she kicks him out. In the wake of this revelation, the near septuagenarian falls into a deep depression, but works to come out of it by spending time with her friends, her children, and grandchildren and expanding the shop. Along the way, she even begins to explore new love. While Andi deals with her heartbreak, she reflects on her 25 years of marriage with Jed, which she contends was a joyful one. Yet, when actually describing the marriage, it doesn’t sound so. For example, when speaking of her children and Jed’s children, she states, “We never became a happy, blended family. There was always tension among our children.” Andi doesn’t seem to have learned much from Jed’s cheating. She neglects to tell her new flame, Niko, that she’s married. These issues make it more difficult to root for the lead in parts of the story. Still, Smith, despite overdramatizing several scenes, ably depicts Andi’s empowering self-actualization in the wake of devastation as she spends more time with the women in her life doing new activities like a “Mud Run,” deep sea fishing, and talking frankly about their sex lives. In addition, realistic internal dialog about decision-making (“Was I overreacting? Did I want to lose Jed? Should I try and make things better? Should I apologize for my outburst?”) adds a layer of authenticity to this unique spin on a coming-of-age story.
A bighearted novel about finding fulfillment in the third act.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sometimes-evocative but inconsistent set of poems.
Lahey’s debut poetry collection follows the speaker’s lifelong struggles with depression, alcohol abuse, and loneliness.
This set’s works are most effective when the speaker discusses his friends, family, and childhood, as those subjects yield personal details, clear images, and a cohesive story. In “Pops,” for instance, the speaker shares memories of his father, “Skating on a pond with frogs, / Racing at the back of the trailers, / Reading the morning comics.” These images make the larger sentiments (“the best damn father a boy could have”) feel more meaningful. “The Wolf” points out “It really is simple: / The wolf you will be, / The black or the white, / The one that you feed,” while in “The White Wolf,” the speaker asserts: “The white wolf is me”—essentially, one who chooses to fight against his vices, instead of giving into them. This essential choice provides the collection’s central main theme. The poet often achieves the tone of a nursery rhyme in his works, which is disturbing and even haunting in the more hard-edged poems. On the other hand, some verses pay insufficient attention to detail; in “12,” for instance, the speaker broadly says, “I felt so alive and cool. / Little did I know, still a young boy, / That I was nothing but a naive fool,” which makes it difficult to actually visualize the boy. This collection might have been stronger if the speaker had shown how his emotions spurred him to action, instead of merely stating them, and allowed readers to witness his pain and suffering firsthand. In “Life,” the speaker relies on clichéd phrases (“Here one day / Gone the next”; “Life is too short”); these might have lingered with readers if the rest of the poems were stronger, instead of relying on vague, basic concepts of light and dark.
A sometimes-evocative but inconsistent set of poems.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66320-399-1
Page Count: 138
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A smart and touchingly sympathetic fictional portrayal of an enigmatic woman.
A historical novel about the once-famous American socialite Dorothy Hale.
Former NBC News producer Hamilton has chosen a subject of her debut novel who’s likely best remembered today as the focus of a famous 1939 painting by Frida Kahlo. In the 1920s and ’30s, the intelligent, attractive, and sophisticated Hale ran in glamorous circles that included future member of Congress and ambassador Clare Boothe Brokaw (later Luce). Hale tried to break into a career in show business, and history has largely judged her as a thwarted figure—someone whose lack of success in entertainment or in love (she was divorced once and had several ill-starred affairs) eventually drove her to leap from her Central Park South apartment window to her death—the very act that Kahlo immortalized in her aforementioned work, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale. In this novel, Hamilton sets out to tell a much fuller story, taking readers on a lightly fictionalized tour of Hale’s upbringing and spending a satisfying amount of time on her complex, loving second marriage to artist Gardner Hale. The narrative also lavishes attention on Dorothy’s increasingly deep friendship with Clare, who manages to do in this novel what she always managed to do in real life—get all the best lines: “Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount,” she writes to Dorothy at one point. At another moment that showcases Hamilton’s ear for conversation and talent for pacing, Gardner tells Dorothy, “You know of course that I am happier than I’ve ever been and will remain so if it’s just the two of us forevermore,” which prompts Dorothy to remember one of Luce’s remarks: “Forevermore is shorter than you think.” Overall, the author’s narrative is smooth and invitingly readable, wearing its clearly considerable research lightly; her version of Dorothy’s doomed relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s adviser and Works Progress Administration administrator Harry Hopkins is surprisingly gripping. The narrative never stoops to easy renditions, and as a result, Dorothy emerges as both a charismatic and vulnerable figure.
A smart and touchingly sympathetic fictional portrayal of an enigmatic woman.Pub Date: March 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-663272-5
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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