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A PERFECT LIFE

The novel’s predictability will likely delight Steel’s die-hard fans, but it won’t win any new ones.

A highly successful woman ponders romance with a younger man.

Steel (Until the End of Time, 2013, etc.) returns with her latest romance. Blaise McCarthy is our heroine. With huge green eyes, red hair, fine features and a fantastic figure, Blaise could easily pass for a woman in her 30s, even though she is practically pushing 50. With stark exposition, Steel outlines a life littered with romantic troubles. Her first husband, a cameraman, died while covering news from an unspecified war zone; her second husband, a venture capitalist 22 years her senior, gave her a beloved daughter, but they soon drifted apart from each other; her next serious relationship crashed and burned when she discovered that charming Andrew Weyland had no intention of ever divorcing his wife. Luckily, her daughter, Salima, thoughtfully understands that Blaise’s job as a renowned television journalist must take precedence over time together. Blinded by juvenile diabetes, Salima still lives with a personal caregiver on the grounds of the Caldwell School in Massachusetts. It’s a perfect life, if you disregard the loneliness of coming home to an empty apartment and limiting love to dinner dates with billionaire Saudi oil executives. It’s a perfect life until Salima’s caregiver dies, the Caldwell school is shut down under quarantine, and Salima is sent home with Simon, her gorgeous, new, very male caregiver. And then there’s the arrival of Susie Quentin, the beautiful, younger new anchor jockeying for Blaise’s job. Forced to take Salima and Simon into her home, Blaise must not only endure disruptions to her routine, but also face the fact that she is strongly attracted to Simon. But could he possibly want an older woman who may not be able to give him the family he wants?

The novel’s predictability will likely delight Steel’s die-hard fans, but it won’t win any new ones.

Pub Date: July 15, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-345-53094-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

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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THE VEGETARIAN

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.

Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015

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