ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702120039
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
BookMarks
An unsentimental story of love and death
Reviewed by MONTY S. LEITCH
BLUE ITALIAN. Rita Ciresi. Ecco Press. $22.
Before she learns that her 31-year-old husband Gary has prostate cancer, Rosa Salvatore suspects him of having an affair. "Was it love - or just plain paranoia - that had crazed Rosa into mistaking a massive tumor for another woman? The error was easy enough to make (she told herself). After all, illness and boredom manifest themselves in exactly the same way: with fatigue."
But what Rosa doesn't know, the reader does know from this sharp novel's very beginning. We know that Gary is dying, will certainly die. We know that, too young, Rosa Salvatore will lose the only man she loves. And so, for us, every angry word out of Rosa's mouth, every ugly, mistakenly jealous thought that passes through her head stings us in a way it can't sting her because we know how much she's going to regret it.
``Blue Italian'' could be a dismal, moralistic tale. But Rita Ciresi, former assistant professor of English at Hollins College, is too honest, too unsentimental, and too gifted a writer for that. And so, instead, "Blue Italian" is funny, acerbic, remorselessly fair, and genuinely, humanly moving. None of us could do any better - and many of us would do much worse - at playing the hand that Rosa and Gary are dealt.
Gary Fisher is the only son of a prosperous Jewish couple, and Rosa is the daughter of an Italian-American plumber named Aldo and his vengefully traditional, maliciously Catholic Italian-American wife. The loony clash of cultures their union sets up provides some of the book's funniest, and most tender, moments. But this is Ciresi's special talent: bouncing her characters from one terrible, ludicrous extreme to another. Just like life. Just like love. Just like death.
You've got to laugh. What else can you do?
For an epigraph, Ciresi has chosen a verse from the Song of Solomon, that greatest of all love poems: "For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave."
In an era when so many people are demanding that issues be black or white, it's good to be reminded that nothing - most especially, love - is that simple.
Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper
Bible hero's life doesn't daunt Alexandra Ripley
Reviewed by LYNN ECKMAN
A LOVE DIVINE. By Alexandra Ripley. Warner Books. $25.
The intrepid Alexandra Ripley dared to write the sequel to "Gone with the Wind," which attracted some commendation and a great deal of calumny.
Undeterred by criticism, she has now undertaken a massive historical novel that delineates the life of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who gave his own tomb for the burial of Jesus.
As Ripley described last March at the Virginia Festival of Books in Charlottesville, "A Love Divine," then in its final draft, demanded equal parts of research and imagination. Only briefly mentioned in the New Testament, Joseph was a sailor before becoming a powerful merchant who traveled from Palestine to England, where tin was mined. The details of his personal life include a love story and the miraculous birth of a crippled daughter. Later the child is cured by Jesus, which prompts Joseph, then an old man, to devote his life to good deeds and to Christianity.
Most of the 700 pages of the story, however, relate to life in Palestine under Roman rule and feature the pageantry and pomp that will assure its success on the big screen - an inevitable reality. Despite the lack of acclaim for Ripley's talent, this latest work will make her a richer woman.
Lynn Eckman teaches English as a second language for the Office of Refugee and Immigration Services.
Southern tale delights
Reviewed by TONI WILLIAMS
CAROLINA MOON. Jill McCorkle. Algonquin. $18.95.
Jill McCorkle, a graduate of the Hollins creative writing program, is at the top of her form in this engaging novel, creating believably wacky characters whose lives entwine in a small Southern town.
When entrepreneur Quee Purdy, well over 60 years old, opens a quit-smoking clinic in her home, citizens of the coastal town of Fulton, N.C., are ruffled because it's yet another of the shady-looking businesses she has spearheaded over the years.
The clinic's offbeat employees include: TomCat Lowe, a brooding carpenter living in a pop-up camper with his passel of dogs in an upscale neighborhood of swimming pools and Volvos; Alicia Jameson, wronged wife of a mysteriously missing radio talk show host know as "the local Howard Stern"; and Quee's goddaughter Denny, a self-made therapist whose tests and techniques comprise the "Flora and Fauna of the Mental Landscape."
McCorkle deftly blends in love, tragedy and intrigue. Who is the married woman who writes letters to her lover even though he killed himself some 20 years ago? Will a young lawyer's wife come out of her aneurism-induced coma before he turns to the arms of her best friend? What does the bitter widow who dreams of compost and cow manure discover in her new load of topsoil?
These voices are true, be they comic or heartrending, and they belong to characters you will care about. This is one of those rare books that gave me a lift each time I picked it up.
Toni Williams writes from her home near Natural Bridge.
Adolescent effort shows promise
Reviewed by LYNN ECKMAN
LOST LAYSEN. By Margaret Mitchell. Edited by Debra Freer. Scribner. $18.
A literary curiosity just recently discovered, "Lost Laysen" is a novella written by Margaret Mitchell when she was 15 years old. If it had been by almost anyone else, only her proud parents would have been eager to read and praise the effort, but the fame of "Gone With the Wind" endows this one with magic. Keeping mistakes in punctuation and excessive underlining intact, "Lost Laysen" leaves no doubt as to the age of its creator, and yet it shows the promise of her future.
Set on a remote island in the South Pacific a century ago, this slight work features an independent young woman who defies convention by traveling to distant places alone. Her beauty and personality attract two men, one a suitor proper to her station in life, the other a rough Irish seaman. Both adore and seek to protect her until the melodramatic finale of this romantic tale.
As interesting as the story itself are the preface and introduction by Debra Freer, the Mitchell scholar who verified the manuscript. Half of this book, containing only 123 pages, consists of letters and photographs of "Peggy" Mitchell and Henry Love Angel, the beau to whom she gave the handwritten composition and who saved it until his death in 1945.
Now, 50 years later, his son has presented it to the public.
While "Lost Laysen" doesn't end "happily ever after," it will appeal to all the millions of readers for whom "Gone With the Wind" remains the great American novel of all time and whose admiration for its author is unquenchable.
Lynn Eckman teaches English as a second language for the Office of Refugee and Immigration Services.
Lindsey spins her plots like so much sugar and air
Reviewed by JUDY KWELLER
SAY YOU LOVE ME. By Johanna Lindsey. William Morrow & Co. $22.
If you're a fan of historical romance, then you're familiar with Johanna Lindsey. I'm not sure what I could say about "Say You Love Me" except that it reminds me of cotton candy. This novel is an overly sweet, beautiful confection that masks the fact that there is a great deal of air here and very little substance. And the cover is pink.
Apparently, Lindsey has written before about the Malory family in Regency, England - a singular collection of wealthy and charming model citizens and scoundrels. (There's even an ex-pirate in the clan.) In this novel, one of the younger Malorys rescues Kelsey Langton, a beautiful, pure but hot-blooded maiden-in-distress.
My daughter, a young wife and mother, loves Johanna Lindsey's books. And she's not alone. Lindsey has written more than two dozen successful novels , which have been translated into 12 languages. I believe every one of the novels has been a bestseller - five of them as No.1 on The New York Times list. This frothy little confection is on its way there, too.
Judy Kweller is a special events coordinator.
So, you want to escape?
Reviewed by JUDY KWELLER
SWEET REVENGE. By Nora Roberts. Bantam. $16.95.
I'm usually skeptical of anything that describes itself as "romantic suspense" that "fuels the dreams of 25 million readers." Actually, spicy food does that for me. But "Sweet Revenge" by Nora Roberts is that old-fashioned kind of cinema-style stuff that involves impossibly wealthy, exotic, desert sheiks, glamorous, international jewel thieves and the type of beautiful jet-setters we used to encounter in 1950s movies.
Roberts is a very successful author of romance novels, and this one is well-written in a "bodice-ripper" style. I don't think anyone will come away from reading this love story to discover life has traveled to another dimension, but it's a pleasant, if pithy, escape.
Judy Kweller is a special events coordinator.
Historical mystery has abundant atmosphere
Reviewed by HARRIET LITTLE
HEARTS AND BONES. By Margaret Lawrence. Avon Books. $23.
Even though the subtitle on the dust jacket proclaims "Hearts and Bones" to be "A Novel of Historical Suspense," Margaret Lawrence's marvelous novel goes far beyond the usual limits of that genre.
This atmospheric tale takes place in a small community in Maine not long after the end of the Revolutionary War and centers around Hannah Trevor, a midwife and healer. Hannah, mistrusted by some because her missing husband had been loyal to England, suddenly finds herself involved in a mystery with the discovery of the mutilated and murdered body of a young woman named Anthea Emory on the night before Valentine's Day.
The mystery as to the killer's identity and motive could, on their own, have successfully carried the plot, but Lawrence's style and literary maneuvering go much further.
The story emerges through entries in Hannah's journal and from testimony during legal proceedings as well as through standard narration. Events are often pieced together in patterns as intricate as those of Hannah's "Hearts and Bones" quilt.
Suitably, the novel takes place in winter and much of it at night, which adds to the dark tone, and the author's descriptions are vividly evocative of both time and place.
Read "Hearts and Bones" for its mystery alone or for its literary excellence as well, but read it.
Harriet Little teaches at James River High School.
`Love is'
Some people forget that love is
tucking you in and kissing you "Good night"
no matter how young or old you are
Some people don't remember that love is
listening and laughing and asking questions
no matter what your age
Few recognize that love is
commitment responsibility no fun at all
unless
Love is
you and me
From LOVE POEMS. By Nikki Giovanni.
William Morrow & Co. $12.
LENGTH: Long : 212 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Rita Ciresi is a former assistant professor ofby CNBEnglish at Hollins College. 2. (headshot) Lindsey.