bookshelf

ELEGANCE

Name: ELEGANCE
Author: Kathleen Tessaro
ISBN: 0-06-052225-9

by Kathleen Tessaro ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2003

Familiar fare, and stale indeed.

bookshelf

Dowdy wife gets dolled up.

Louise Canova is dimly aware that her marriage has grown cold—her husband Colin, a successful but dull actor, calls her Pumpkin, or, less kindly, Ouise (pronounced “Wheeze”). He doesn’t even care when his mother-in-law, a still-glamorous former model, is icily condescending toward his unhappy wife. Oh, what can this little brown wren do? (She has no idea.) Then, dawdling in a secondhand bookstore in London, Louise comes across a slim, jasmine-scented volume from 1964, penned by the ineffably soignée directress of a French couture house, and she experiences an epiphany. In A to Z format, the very grand and deeply conservative Madame Genevieve Antoine Dariaux offers advice on all aspects of dress and fashion, which Louise takes quite seriously. Fur-trimmed suits with gloves for afternoon? Six-acre peignoirs for those intimate evenings? Maybe her husband, if only she could afford such sartorial splendor, would notice her. But Colin seems, well, embarrassed that she would even want to change. And he knows perfectly well there’s nothing at all wrong with their relationship. On the other hand, if Louise wants to see a marriage counselor by herself, he sees nothing wrong with that. Now, if she would just listen to his remarkable plan for organizing the kitchen garbage: big bits of rubbish in the big bin, small bits in the small bin . . . . Louise’s thoughts are understandably elsewhere as she remembers ill-fated shopping excursions with her mother in Pittsburgh. Her mother was a little brown wren, too, a scientist who cut her own hair and wore frumpy clothes (never mind her intellect or education: this trite tale never questions why appearance is so important—it just is). Perhaps, muses Louise, that’s why she never thought about taking care of herself, remaining now unlovely and unloved. It’s all very sad—until other men begin to notice her. Oh, dear: Should she let Oliver take her out for a drink? Should she spurn the attention of the much younger Eddie?

Familiar fare, and stale indeed.

Pub Date: July 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-06-052225-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
RARE OBJECTS
by Kathleen Tessaro

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PERFUME COLLECTOR
by Kathleen Tessaro

bookshelf

CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

bookshelf

Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

- BOOK REVIEW
PRECIPICE
by Robert Harris

- BOOK REVIEW
ACT OF OBLIVION
by Robert Harris

- BOOK REVIEW
V2
by Robert Harris

bookshelf

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

bookshelf

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.