An exceptional debut, sensitive and rich without sentimentality.
A finely crafted first novel that, in the form of a young woman’s childhood recollections of her mother, creates a portrait of the last days of Franco’s Spain.
Young Maria de los Milagros, known to one and all as Milagrosa, has no one to blame but herself if she’s not a child prodigy: after all, her mother Carmen began taking her to school at the age of two. That, admittedly, was more for her mother’s benefit than hers—Carmen was the village schoolmistress and saw no reason to waste good money on a babysitter—but it gave Milagrosa something of a head start all the same. A sensitive and sheltered girl, Milagrosa is nevertheless completely overshadowed by her strong and outgoing mother. Used to getting her way, Carmen does not suffer fools gladly: in one of her fits of pique, she even punched out the mayor and was subsequently dismissed from her post. Undeterred, she took a position in her old hometown and moved back with her daughter, sister, and mother (her husband, who refused to move, was unceremoniously left behind). In her new surroundings, during the 1960s, Milagrosa grows up surrounded by all the old certitudes of Spain—making her First Communion; listening to Franco’s weekly radio broadcasts—but her coming-of-age is troubled by storm clouds of change looming over Spain and her family alike. Carmen finds herself the victim of a rebellion after her mother dies, when her nephew Arturo stands up to her and demands that his mother receive her fair share (i.e., the greater part) of the estate. That’s bad enough, but soon the whole country seems on the verge of turmoil when the elderly Franco falls deathly ill. Can Spain survive without Carmen’s beloved caudillo? Can Carmen? The old ways die hard, but hardest of all for the old themselves.
An exceptional debut, sensitive and rich without sentimentality.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2002
ISBN: 1-903517-07-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dedalus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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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