by Maggie Alderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2005
A lively romp down under. Vibrant characters, a beguiling setting and a plot that engages from start to finish.
A sassy magazine editor searches for romance among flamboyant artists and social climbers in Sydney.
Georgia Abbott has all but given up on love after walking in on her cheating fiancé. Tired of sulking around London, Georgia decides a change of scenery will be just the thing to cure her broken heart. On a whim, she accepts an editorial job at Glow Magazine and heads down under. Alderson, an editor at British Elle, understands the magazine business and does a magnificent job of sweeping the reader up in the glamorous world of fashion. She also has a special gift for dialogue and makes each chapter more outrageous than the last as Georgia gets to know the recovering addict, the bulimic and the self-absorbed promiscuous princess who make up Glow’s editorial staff. Though Georgia quickly adopts the staff’s insouciant attitude and quirky style, her introduction to Sydney’s men doesn’t go quite as smoothly. Alderson gets right to the heart of the matter—the men that women are drawn to and the men that women actually need are often quite different. Georgia falls for a succession of wrong men: the pathological womanizer, the handsome dim-wit who’s in love with another woman and the underachieving artist who is far too fond of marijuana. The author is adept at exposing the powerlessness women often feel in relationships. Until Georgia builds her self-confidence and properly heals from her breakup, she’ll never meet Mr. Right. Here, copious amounts of champagne can be a great way to kick up your heals with friends, but the path to happiness is found in self-reflection and purposeful living. As her year in Sydney comes to an end, there’s a surprise or two in store for Georgia, providing hope that there are still good men out there.
A lively romp down under. Vibrant characters, a beguiling setting and a plot that engages from start to finish.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2005
ISBN: 0-425-20571-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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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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