Adolescent girls with unstable mothers are a familiar theme in fiction today, but there's nothing derivative about this Oprah-propelled overnight bestseller. First-time novelist Janet Fitch expertly depicts the toxic relationship between a self-centered, charismatic poet named Ingrid and her young daughter Astrid. When a lover spurns Ingrid (a first for her), she summarily murders him, leaving Astrid to fend for herself in a series of foster homes. Though it's a hard-knock life—the teen has an affair with her trailer-trash foster mother's boyfriend and wins a bullet in the hip—it's also a step toward freedom from Ingrid, who persists in trying to control Astrid from prison. Author Fitch is overly fond of bad similes ("her calm...like a patient hawk on top of a lightning-struck tree"), and it's hard not to chortle at Ingrid's contrived poetspeak. But those are quibbles: This book will seduce you. (Little, Brown, $24)
Bottom Line: Powerful tale of a primal, poisonous bond
by Thomas Harris
Break out the Chianti and fava beans. It's time to savor the long-awaited sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, which was as deep and disturbing a thriller as has ever been written. Comparing this one to that 1988 classic—which made an icon out of erudite flesh-eater Hannibal Lecter—is unfair but irresistible, so here goes: Hannibal falls a few courses short of its delectable predecessor.
This time around, the escaped Lecter is on the loose and one of his surviving, vengeance-minded victims tries to lure him out with live bait—FBI agent Clarice Starling, Lecter's nemesis from Lambs. Harris writes with authority and a knack for detail, creating some memorably creepy scenes. But Hannibal lacks the streamlined structure and sparse elegance of Lambs, laying on too much plot and over-the-top gore.
Even Dr. Lecter loses some of his evil luster here, as his fey connois-seurship seems overdone ("he removed the cork as carefully as he might trepan a skull"). Hannibal is still a truly scary book; it's just not the kind of five-star fare its demon deserves. (Delacorte, $27.95)
Bottom Line: Not as spooky as Lambs, but hardly chopped liver
by Jill Conner Browne
First there was the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the heroes of Rebecca Wells's prodigiously popular novel. Now we have the Sweet Potato Queens, yet another bevy of warm-hearted, tough-minded southern belles. Dolled up in red glam wigs, majorette boots and green-sequined, strategically padded mini-dresses, this sorority of "real-life women—self-sufficient and self-actualized" has been, since 1982, the star attraction of the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Jackson, Miss. After years of throwing trinkets to their fans, these self-crowned regional celebrities are now dispensing pearls of down-home wisdom. Their Book of Love, by Jill Conner Browne, the group's informal leader, is a good-humored collection of advice on everything from what to eat "when tragedy strikes" (Danger Pudding; Fat Mama's Knock You Naked Margaritas) to how to distinguish "men who signal danger" from "men who may need killing, quite frankly." Some readers will be inspired by the Queens' quick wit and high spirits. Others may feel a bit wearied by all this blue-eyed southern soul—or, quite frankly, just a little ya-ya'd out. (Three Rivers, $12)
Bottom Line: Spunky advice on beauty, life and love
by Pamela Thomas-Graham
It's murder by the books again for Nikki Chase, hero of the second Ivy League mystery from author Pamela Thomas-Graham. This time the black, headstrong Harvard economics professor is in New Haven to console a white college buddy whose wife, Yale law professor and conservative TV pundit Amanda Fox, was fatally stabbed, then mutilated. The cops think one of her students, a black male, did it. Chase thinks she knows better.
Loaded with familiar social commentary, this formulaic saga about power couples, race and prejudice stalls as, once too often, coincidence substitutes for craft. The blood might be blue, but this mystery is common-place. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
Bottom Line: No lesson in suspense
by Richard Mason
Richard Mason, a student at Oxford, is only 21, but he writes like someone older. Much older. In fact, he writes like a guy who has been dead for about a hundred years, because he seems to have cribbed his plotlines from Victorian Novels for Dummies. This suspenser, a bestseller in England, echoes (but really faintly) Wuthering Heights and Rebecca as our gentle narrator, English violinist James Farrell, kills his longtime wife, Sarah, in the obligatory spooky windswept castle. In flashback we learn that James loved the beautiful but betrothed Ella, who happens to be...(uh-oh)...Sarah's lookalike cousin. Hey, is this an homage to the Brontë sisters or The Patty Duke Show? Amid much brooding on love, loss and windswept-castle maintenance, various people die of unnatural plot twists—indeed, Mason is lucky his characters don't sue him for inducing logic whiplash, especially the girl who demands that her swain prove his devotion by smooching another man. All this leads to a "surprise" ending that chimes in as predictably as Big Ben. (Warner, $24)
Bottom Line: Doesn't hold water
by Andrew Klavan
Beach book of the week
Plucky characters, gut-churning danger and a gifted little girl are at the heart of this brilliantly conceived page-turner. Klavan (True Crime) weaves the tale of a jazz musician ensnared in a prostitute's attempt to protect her 5-year-old daughter from a team of thugs. The bad guys' redheaded ringleader exudes an evil that scorches the page, but he's just the pawn of a company whose business is squelching Third World uprisings (mostly through torture) on behalf of multinational corporations. Just why such a high-level operation would seek out little Amanda is the mystery that unfolds—and when it does, we're hooked. Klavan wraps up his riveting story with an ending that will have you holding your breath until tears—of relief, sorrow and triumph—finally spring to your eyes. (Morrow, $25)
Bottom Line: Smart, gritty thriller
>WELCOME TO PARADISE Laurence Shames From the author of Mangrove Squeeze, a darkly comic tale of vacationing mafiosi and the havoc they wreak in Key West. (Villard, $22.95)
THE HUNGRY OCEAN Linda Greenlaw The Perfect Storm may have thrilled you, but in this New England sea captain's taut, funny memoir, it's another day at the office. (Hyperion, $22.95)
NO ONE YOU KNOW Bruce Eric Kaplan Droll, sharp-eyed cartoons, mostly from The New Yorker, about couples, kids and the absurdities they create, by a former writer for Seinfeld. (Simon & Schuster, $13.95)
>Maria Shriver
When Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy died in 1995, she left her smallest descendants with some painful questions. "They knew someone had passed," recalls Kennedy granddaughter Maria Shriver of her own young daughters, Katherine and Christina. "And they asked, 'Where did she go?' "
Unsure of how to discuss the topic, Shriver, 43, listened to her girls' own ideas and was moved by their vision of a warm, happy afterlife. Now the NBC News anchor has turned those thoughts into the bestselling What's Heaven?—a children's story about a girl named Kate whose great-grandmother dies.
"It's not a book you'll read every night," admits Shriver, who now has four children (Katherine, 9; Christina, 7; Patrick, 5; and Christopher, 18 months) with actor husband Arnold Schwarzenegger. But she hopes the book will be a "starting point" for families who need to talk about a loved one's death—as hers did again when Schwarzenegger's mother died last summer. "The girls said, 'Daddy, your mom is with your dad,' " she recalls. "He found it comforting when they told him it was okay."
- Contributors:
- Laura Jamison,
- Alex Tresniowski,
- Francine Prose,
- V.R. Peterson,
- Kyle Smith,
- Monica Rizzo.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
