A superficial, verbose account of a problematic relationship.
Two writers cautiously inch toward love in this Israeli university teacher’s sluggish first novel, following the collection Housebroken (2001).
Yonatan Luria, 45, lives in Tel Aviv with his ten-year-old daughter Dana. His wife Ilana died five years before in a car accident. Since then Yonatan has written only a few pages, though he has a reputation based on two earlier novels about love. Money’s not a problem; Ilana’s rich American parents continue to send regular checks. Yonatan’s eventual partner, 36-year-old Shira Klein, saw her first novel top the bestseller list, but that was three years ago. She too has writer’s block. Shira is unmarried, though she has had affairs. She doesn’t make things easy for herself; if men are either “very smart or not enough,” out come her claws. Yonatan, who considers himself an excellent lover, has been celibate for years, though women are always hitting on him. These two difficult people, lonely, restless and self-hating, meet over dinner at a mutual friend’s house. He wants me, he wants me not, muses Shira. She wants me, she wants me not, muses Yonatan. Just do it, begs the reader, but their first kiss will not come until past the halfway point, and it will be another 100 pages before a joint declaration of love. Meanwhile, Dana is experiencing preadolescent anxieties, and Shira’s retired father Max is slowly dying. Hedaya provides context through glimpses of Tel Aviv life, but she does not have the alchemy to invest the mundane with significance. Towards the end, as Yonatan begins teaching in Jerusalem, attention shifts to Shira’s vigil for Max. That’s unfortunate, for the love relationship could use closer examination after Yonatan’s university gig exposes him as a supreme narcissist, thrilled that his students are more interested in him than in Faulkner, his ostensible subject.
A superficial, verbose account of a problematic relationship.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8050-7348-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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