15 out of 15 people found this review helpful.
Scattered and Incomplete
Date of Review: May 25, 2001
The Bottom Line: Don't waste your time. All of the characters and subplots that are introduced go nowhere and there is no miracle ending.
I normally have lower standards for audio books but this book was so bad that I even noticed its badness listening to the audio version.
The book is about a female war photojournalist who is injured on assignment in Kosovo, but her boyfriend is killed in the same incident. As she recovers, she finds love also must return home to deal with her sick mother, who she resents for "denying her any love" during her childhood.
The main problem I had with the book is: the narrator goes on and on about how she hates her mother denying any love for her, yet she never gives any example of how this was done. Did her mom never come to her graduation...didn't take her to school the first day...what? Over and over she repeats the same line about denial of love, but never gives any example that would make us sympathize. The main character seems to be well-balanced otherwise and fairly compassionate, so it does not fit that when her mother finally provides a very legitimate explanation, it does nothing to sway her hatred. Her boyfriend Jake is also very reasonable, and I expected him to set her straight after her mother's explanation, but he just let it go. Ridiculous.
The author also throws in tons of subplots for no apparent reason and with no or weak resolution:
- who inherits Lowell's?
- why was the painter thrown in at the end?
- why was the abused french girl there at all? Did she and Mike finally get together? (the convenient killing of the husband was a cop-out)
- were the bosses' of these two slacker photojournalists really ok with them hanging around the south of france and New York for months and months without doing any work and keeping their jobs? Were they paid during this time?
- what happened to the brother and fiance?
- did the mom die?
- did the Lowell's IPO happen?
- did they ever finish the photo book?
- what happened to the lost half-sister?
This book was incredibly sloppy and annoying and felt very unfinished. It was like a brainstorm more than a finished product.
