There’s not a wasted word or a false emotion in this elegant, meditative work from a mature master.
A family regroups after the death of its nurturing matriarch in this tender, unsparing novel by Whitbread Award winner Cartwright (The Song Before It Is Sung, 2007, etc.).
Nearly a year after Nancy Cross’s death, her children still feel off-balance without her. Her son Ed, 32 years old and a rising star at a London law firm, is increasingly oppressed by wife Rosalie’s obsession with having a baby and drifts into a casual affair. Daughter Lucy, 26, is cataloguing Roman coins at an auction house and trying to shake off a creepy ex-boyfriend. They both wish their father David, a recently retired TV anchorman, would stop working out obsessively and behave more like a widower. David can’t tell his children that he is “in some ways happier now that their mother is dead.” He loved Nancy, but “he limited the range of his heart deliberately” after a summer in Rome during the 1960s that ended with the drowning of the girl he was sleeping with. Memories of that summer recur throughout; David had a small part in a film of Dr. Faustus starring Richard Burton, and he sometimes feels that he too sold his soul for material success he doesn’t entirely value. As events come to a crisis in London, David heads to the Kalahari Desert, where his older brother Guy has for years been seeking spiritual transcendence. But this is not a novel about leaving the world behind; Guy is in fact something of a nut, and David returns to find Rosalie pregnant, Ed in a new job in Geneva and Lucy promoted at the auction house, making a life with a sweet new boyfriend she plans to marry. A baptism and an embrace from David’s closest male friend end this moving tale, replete with the autumnal understanding that our lives are fashioned from compromise and from adjustments to those we love—and no less valuable for all that.
There’s not a wasted word or a false emotion in this elegant, meditative work from a mature master.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59691-621-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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