Some nice historical color and a raft of exotic settings, hobbled by the pedestrian plot and a tiresome contemporary...
Canadian novelist Swan (The Wives of Bath, 1993, etc.) intertwines 18th- and 21st-century tales to lead two young women toward maturity and emotional fulfillment.
Archivist Luce Adams pauses in Venice to loan the Sansovinian Library a journal written by her ancestor, Asked For Adams, about a journey taken in 1797 with the notorious Giacomo Casanova, whose letters describing the trip accompany the diary. Along with Luce is Lee Pronski, the lesbian lover of Luce’s mother; the two women are en route to a memorial service in Crete, where Kitty Adams died in an automobile accident. Luce begins to read Asked For’s journal, which also begins in Venice; Asked For’s father, cousin to President John Adams, has been sent there on a trade mission, but dies suddenly of a fever. Rather than submit to the loutish American farmer her father wished her to marry, Asked For takes off with the aged but still fascinating Casanova for Istanbul, where he claims that his long-lost love is imprisoned in the Ottoman Sultan’s harem. In present time, Luce wishes she could escape from the embarrassing legacy of her mother, an archeologist who controversially embraced a feminist view of prehistoric life that stressed the importance of goddesses. She resents Lee, who broke up the cozy mother-daughter twosome (Dad was long gone), and the contemporary story mostly involves Luce sulking and Lee being overbearing as they head toward Crete. Asked For’s narrative is slightly more engaging; she’s calm and self-reliant, never indulging in the self-pity she’s far more entitled to than stuck-in-adolescence Luce. The parallels between the two tales are awfully neat, right down to the Ottoman manuscript that reveals Asked For’s happy final destiny and also leads Luce to a handsome Turkish translator. The blossoming of affection between Luce and Lee seems similarly contrived to satisfy the author’s plans rather than the characters’ needs.
Some nice historical color and a raft of exotic settings, hobbled by the pedestrian plot and a tiresome contemporary protagonist.Pub Date: June 6, 2005
ISBN: 1-58234-453-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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
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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