Clever, smart—and thin.
This fourth from the talented Ellmann (Man or Mango?, 1998, etc.) has her usual lists, facts, wicked humor, and violent charm—but not cohesion enough to bring it all together.
Our Dot is indeed an insignificant dot in the universe. Though happily MARRIED to John Buster (she’d probably be LESS happy if she knew he wasn’t a fishermen gone to sea weeks at a time, but a philandering husband with a JOB as a school counselor and a string of girlfriends), she is beginning to question what it’s all FOR. After a quick decision that it’s all for NOUGHT, she attempts suicide (just after she hits a little boy mistaken for a traffic cone), but, as the chosen tea cozy proves an inappropriate noose, Dot lives to see another day. This extra time allows her to kill a few irritating old ladies (why, they’re EVERYWHERE!) before she finally succumbs a few years later by JUMPING off a bridge. Unfortunately, Dot is still a dot in the universe, only now it’s the underworld. Given a tour to make Dante proud, Dot is ESCORTED through the various territories by none other than Dot’s favorite TV home décor maven, Belinda Lurcher (who fixes up the place on the way through). After some bureaucratic WRANGLING, Dot is next in line for reincarnation, and, lo and behold, she enters life again as a newly born opossum. But with vivisection what it is, Dot soon finds herself AGAIN in the underworld, this time prepared to check HUMAN on the required reentry form. Her next life is far more SATISFACTORY but holds a number of surprising similarities to the last two, including an end that seems an AWFUL lot like the beginning. Dot, not existing in three-dimensions, doesn’t provide Ellmann’s wry and raunchy humor with the stable foundation it needs. Jokes, facts, keen observations—and MUCH emphasis through capitalization—are reduced to gimmicks in the presence of this ambivalent heroine.
Clever, smart—and thin.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2004
ISBN: 1-58234-351-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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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