Well-meaning but wooden drama from Hill (An Ordinary Woman, 2002, etc.).
Toxic memories, mental illness, painful recovery.
Rayne Holland is a “wonderful, caring person with a brilliant filmmaking career ahead of her.” Her emotionally wrenching documentary on incest victims garnered stellar reviews and important awards. Her marriage to handsome Paul has some problems—more on that later—but she loves her five-year-old daughter Desiree and her life in Savannah, Georgia, among the African-American intellectual elite. Lately, though, Rayne has been moody, troubled by nameless fears and a strange distractedness. And she’s not interested in sex, to Paul’s dismay. After she alone survives the car crash that kills her husband and daughter, she tries to kill herself and winds up in a mental institution. Suicidal, mute with shock, emotionally withdrawn—well, maybe she can recover in this safe haven, paid for by a seemingly limitless insurance plan. There is no shouting in this distinctly unreal haven, no lunatics running about in tattered gowns—in fact, none of that crazy-folks mess anywhere. Decorous patients stroll the beautifully landscaped paths, accompanied by kindly doctors. But why, asks her lifelong friend Gayle, won’t she speak? These things take time, replies Pauline Dennis, a compassionate psychologist right out of decades of TV dramas written for women, as she smoothes her immaculately starched white smock, musing silently on the powerful connection she feels to her new patient. Her interviews with Rayne’s family begin to uncover various secrets. There is Seething Resentment over Paul’s clandestine affair with Gayle, and Deep-Seated Guilt over her mother’s early death. There’s even Emotional Neglect and an Indifferent Father—but Dr. Dennis has a feeling there’s Something More. And a Terrible Secret comes to light: Rayne is an incest victim herself, sexually assaulted by her uncle. Will she ever find closure and heal the wounds of the past?
Well-meaning but wooden drama from Hill (An Ordinary Woman, 2002, etc.).Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-28193-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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