Sunny outlook with enough clouds to keep it interesting.
The collapse of her marriage, not to mention a three-story fall, sends a woman back home to Charleston, S.C., to investigate her father’s disappearance, in Crouch’s sardonic second (Girls in Trucks, 2008).
Hannah, 35, and her now-estranged husband Jon are sudden San Francisco millionaires—their online sex-toy business has taken off. Her drinking and infidelity have driven Jon away. Hannah suffered her most intractable emotional wound 24 years before, the day her father Buzz, a successful doctor, motored out alone into Charleston harbor, accompanied only by the family dog, Tucker. He never showed up for his son Palmer’s soccer game that afternoon. His boat was found, containing only Tucker. Buzz’s body was never recovered. His beautiful wife, Daisy, moved on and married DeWitt, Charleston’s wealthiest man. Hannah has always compared her looks—she resembles her father, whose features look too big on her—unfavorably to her mother’s. After drunkenly scaling Jon’s apartment building to prove her love, and losing her footing thanks to a yapping terrier, she wakes up in the hospital. Jon and Daisy give her a choice: recuperation in Charleston, or rehab. Rooting among old photos in DeWitt’s mansion, she discovers some unsettling clues. One snapshot shows Daisy and Buzz at a party with a group of stoned, hippie-like friends. Hovering in the background is DeWitt. But Daisy claimed not to have met DeWitt until after Buzz vanished. Palmer, a veterinarian, is quarreling with his boyfriend Tom over whether they want a child—as if gay life in Charleston wasn’t challenging enough. In his mind, Palmer obsessively revisits his father’s last day—was Buzz driven to suicide after accidentally spotting Palmer in flagrante with another boy? Only Hannah still thinks Buzz may be alive. But if he is, why did he abandon her? Although it’s believable, one senses Hannah’s quest for Buzz is merely a pretext—self-knowledge and redefinition of family are the real goals here.
Sunny outlook with enough clouds to keep it interesting.Pub Date: April 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-00213-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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