Review by Booklist Review
Beattie, one of the preeminent names in modern fiction, has forged a reputation for low-key writing, characters, and stories. In fact, the main character of this book is not Dara Falcon, but Jean Warner, a self-effacing, almost mousy housewife in New Hampshire. When Dara, a flamboyant, attractive, self-proclaimed actress, sweeps in and stirs up the town and the family Jean has joined, Jean's marriage ends and she goes back to college. Dara moves to New York, but Jean remains plagued by questions about her. Dara Falcon was an enigma, at best; a person who made up her life on the fly. Jean's parents both died in a plane crash; the aunt who raised her has not spoken to her in years. Struggling to find her own identity, she discusses Dara with each new friend, rooting for new information or perspectives. Thus, this becomes almost a mystery story, complete with surprise ending. Ultimately, Jean gets some answers, but they only raise more questions. Beattie has built quite a following. Though this latest lags in certain areas, it is bound to please her many readers who question, along with her characters, "Why am I here?" --Kevin Grandfield
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Raised after her parents' death by an unloving maiden aunt, young Jean Warner has struggled to leave the loneliness of her childhood behind: she dropped out of college, rushed into marriage and lost herself as best she could in the bosom of her husband's large, close-knit New Hampshire family. But when she falls under the spell of Darcy Fisher, aka Dara Falcon, a seductive aspiring actress with a mysterious past, Jean's marriage begins to reveal its flaws, and Jean is forced to taste the bitterness that permeates her new family's claustrophobic self-involvement. In what is her first true coming-of-age novel, Beattie (Picturing Will; Another You) returns to the 1970s that she once chronicled firsthandalmost invariably, for her characters, a time of domestic dissolution and disillusionment. As in Beattie's more recent novels, however, the pain here holds some promise of redemption, or at least eventual contentment (Jean tells her story from the safe distance of the 1990s and a happy second marriage). The texture of Nixon- and Ford-era upper-middle-class life, the minutiae and conversational rhythms that made Beattie's name as an observer of contemporary culture, bear less of her story's burden than they do in earlier fiction. In all, this is perhaps Beattie's most traditional work to date (it is certainly one of her most accomplished): in their different ways, heroine and villainess live out the dictum (most famously phrased by George Eliot) that character is destiny. Or, as Jean puts it, "Unless you're very, very luckywhich, as everyone knows, we so rarely are when we really, truly need luckthose things we've done wrong will inevitably boomerang." What finally separates Jean from Dara, and from many of Beattie's most pathetic (and sympathetic) characters, is the ability to learn from her own failings. That ability makes this novel a comedyand something of a relief for readers who have always trusted Beattie to tell the truth about her generation's romantic troubles, even when the truth was all cloud and no silver lining. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
"There Dara sat; the star, with stars in her eyes. And I felt illumined, as if lit by ambient light." This just about sums up the effect of Dara Falcon on Jean Warner, so cheerfully caught up in the affairs of her husband's ingrown family that she sometimes seems incidental, even to herself. But then Dara comes to towncharming, flirtatious Dara, whose past remains a mystery, who is forever re-creating herself (which is to say, lying)and, remarkably, she and Jean become friends. That is, she lays siege to Jean for purposes of her own just as she lays siege to various eligible and not-so-eligible men in her vicinity. As Jean contends with Dara, her subtly shifting feelings about the family, and the suspicious Tom Van Santwho has returned home after many years and is soon setting up a business that threatens the family'sthe reader feels a terrible vortex slowly pulling everyone downward. Dara is a fascinating character, and though she finally gets on the reader's nerves, Beattie has crafted a fine study of obsessive relationships with her usual aplomb. For all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/95.]Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Beattie follows up the successful Another You (1995) with a tale of domestic grief on a low boil. Dara Falcon is the sort of woman who can easily stick in your craw. As predatory and majestic as her namesake, she manages to swoop down on poor Jean Warner and sink her talons in: ``Dara Falcon was once Darcy Fisher. She either had or hadn't been a promising young actress. She either did or did not have a baby when she was sixteen.'' Nothing is very clear about Dara's past, and--as Jean figures out after she's known her for a while--her present life is hardly less deceptive. In the small New Hampshire town where Jean lives with her husband Bob, however, Dara's sudden and unexplained appearance brings a measure of glamour that most of the locals are too dazzled to question. Passionate, charming, seductive, Dara makes a play for most of the men in town but settles for a while on Tom Van Sant, an old schoolmate of Bob's. This puts Jean in an awkward position when the two part ways, since she has to assume the most thankless of diplomatic roles as intermediary to a broken couple. When an elaborate conflict over the return of Tom's ring blows up in Jean's face and Dara accuses her of disloyalty, Jean slowly begins to wonder what manner of girl she's dealing with. ``It would be difficult to explain why Dara and I went on to have a friendship,'' she concludes. ``It was a friendship . . . in which I listened in desultory fashion and trusted absolutely nothing she said.'' Finally, a resolution is offered when a tragedy confirms Jean's suspicions about Dara's motives and priorities, and allows her to find a way out of the emotional maze of Dara's many damaging fantasies. Crisp prose with little behind it: Beattie's narrative skill nearly makes up for the paltry tale itself--but not quite.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
