my lover's lover book review

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My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell

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Maggie O'Farrell is an astute commercial writer with an understanding of popular taste. My Lover's Lover, her second novel, is to literature what films such as Sliding Doors and What Lies Beneath are to cinema.

It makes sense to discuss her work in terms of film, as its influence on her work is so clear. Take the opening scene, for example, where the heroine tumbles chaotically at the feet of the handsome architect hero with his "glittering blue gaze". Pure Notting Hill. Or the one where she "battered his back and shoulders with [her] fists". Or how about that old standby where the future lovers spar feistily, trading insults and vowing eternal enmity before sprinting off down a hillside in giggling pursuit of each other?

It's entertaining up to a point, but a bit lazy. O'Farrell squanders her talent throughout the first half of this book, hits her stride in Part Two with some fine writing, and finally, after teasing us with hints of madness, murder and parallel realities, fails to deliver a dénouement.

The novel opens with Lily, a curiously insubstantial character, falling at the feet of the mysterious Marcus. With unconvincing haste, she moves into the vast trendy warehouse home he shares with his best friend, Aidan, an animator. Immediately she is assailed by terrifying ghostly visitations from Marcus's (presumably) dead previous girlfriend, a Gorgon-haired beauty called Sinead.

Neither Aidan nor Marcus will talk about what became of Sinead, and Lily is soon gripped with obsession. O'Farrell nods openly to Hitchcock here, with Lily and Marcus in one scene watching Rebecca on TV, and references to Vertigo in flashbacks to the falling scene.

The supernatural shocks are handled well, but unfortunately the characters are flat. Later, O'Farrell will intriguingly describe the Protean quality of Marcus, his Tofu-like ability to take on the hue of those around him; but for the first half of the book, he is a vacuum.

There's nothing beyond the glittering blue gaze. This may be because we're seeing him through the eyes of Lily, who is equally blank. Not until she discovers that her ghostly predecessor is, in spite of appearances, actually alive and well and living not too far away, does the book finally take off.

Lily confronts Sinead on Hungerford bridge, while a train thunders past, drowning her words. (cf On The Waterfront). In extended flashback, we learn the entire story of Marcus's first doomed relationship and the reason for Sinead's sudden departure. Having been hyped, the revelation of this mystery turns out to be a bit of a damp squib.

However, O'Farrell's account of the relationship between Marcus and Sinead shows what she is capable of. Everything loosens up, and the prose becomes more impressionistic.

Short interlocking scenes shift between past and present. Marcus is fleshed out, Sinead is a lively presence. Unfortunately, although this section is long and absorbing, its energy is not sustained to the end. The somewhat morose presence of Aidan comes to the fore as everything winds down.

There are really only two characters, Marcus and Sinead, and theirs is the only interesting relationship. The rest are shadows. Perhaps this is intentional, a way of concentrating the spotlight on the main dynamic; but I suspect that it's connected to Maggie O'Farrell's cinematic approach.

What works on film, however, does not always work in the novel. My Lover's Lover is a slick, stylish read and will do well, but she is capable of better than this.

Carol Birch's latest novel is 'Come Back, Paddy Riley' (Virago)

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MY LOVER’S LOVER

by Maggie O’Farrell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2003

Hip and understated, but, at its heart, embarrassingly mawkish and sentimental.

Britisher O’Farrell’s second (following her award-winning debut, After You’d Gone , 2001) is a fairly standard tale, set in London, of girls meeting, getting, and losing boys.

Lily is a professional translator who gave up her career because she found herself unable to think in English anymore, and she now moves among odd jobs as secretary, babysitter, and window-dresser while living at home with her mother. At an art gallery opening, she meets Marcus, a handsome architect, who makes a pass at her and invites her to live with him—as a roommate. With nothing to lose, Lily agrees and moves into Marcus’s custom-designed loft, taking the room that until recently had belonged to a woman named Sinead (who, Marcus explains ominously, “is no longer with us”). Sinead’s presence hovers over the room like a ghost (her clothes, her perfume, Marcus’s unwillingness to talk about her), and Lily finds herself increasingly haunted—to such a degree that at times she even sees Sinead in the apartment. Is she losing her mind? Possibly—but not in the way she thinks: Sinead is alive and well, teaching at a London university, and, eventually, Lily sees her in a bookstore. By this time, Lily has become Marcus’s lover and has figured out that Sinead was an old flame whom Marcus preferred not to discuss. But Lily needs to know what went wrong between them, and she begins stalking Sinead in an attempt to speak to her. Eventually she succeeds, and Sinead tells Lily what came between her and Marcus. It’s not really much of a secret—in fact, it sounds a bit like an episode of Friends —but it lets Lily know what sort of man she’s dealing with.

Pub Date: June 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-670-03215-8

Page Count: 284

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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by Harper Lee

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My Lover's Lover : Book summary and reviews of My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell

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My Lover's Lover

by Maggie O'Farrell

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Published May 2003 228 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information

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When Lily slips on the sidewalk outside a London gallery and literally falls at the feet of a stranger, Marcus, the attraction is instant and electric. Within a week she is sharing this magnetic yet elusive architect's waterfront loft and sleeping in the room that belonged to his girlfriend, Sinead - of whom all he will say is "she's no longer . . . with us." But there lingers a distinct presence, of a woman who seems to have disappeared abruptly - leaving behind a single sexy dress in the closet, a puzzling mark on the wall, and the suffocating scent of jasmine. As Lily falls ever more deeply in love with Marcus, Sinead's aura consumes her with fear and obsession that spark a drama of passion and betrayal.

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"British writer O'Farrell turns a deceptively simple romantic novel into an engrossing story of psychological suspense." - Publishers Weekly. "This is a deeply satisfying second effort by O'Farrell, who exhibits a distinctive, well-crafted literary flair." - Booklist. "Captivating... O’Farrell's novel, written with passion and clarity, beautifully describes how old relationships can haunt new love. Spookily good." - Elle (UK). " Hip and understated, but, at its heart, embarrassingly mawkish and sentimental." - Kirkus Reviews. "A disappointing follow-up to O'Farrell's first novel." - Library Journal.

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Maggie O'Farrell Author Biography

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Maggie O'Farrell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), After You'd Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), and Instructions for a Heatwave . She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death . She lives in Edinburgh.

Author Interview Link to Maggie O'Farrell's Website

Name Pronunciation Maggie O'Farrell: oh-FEHR-uhl

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My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell 322pp, Review, £12.99

Second novels are famously tricky - even trickier if the first has been an obvious success. Though all those rejected authors out there might find it hard to weep in sympathy, there's nothing quite like a lauded debut to freeze you in your tracks. I came to Maggie O'Farrell's second novel all too sympathetically aware of this fact, though the feeling was coloured - or complicated - by the burden of not really having enjoyed her first. There, though, I'm in a minority. After You'd Gone has garnered the sort of cumulative success most first-time writers would kill for.

In this new one, we're in the contemporary arty twentysomething London of many a TV play: a converted warehouse flat, an aimless girl, an enigmatic guy - and a ghost. Lily, who has several part-time jobs and a somewhat passive take on life, bumps into architect Marcus at a gallery opening. He's not only dishy, he has a room to let. She moves in. When he tells her that his girlfriend, Sinead, "is no longer with us", Lily assumes he means dead. OK, fair enough, but it's one of those assumptions you can only get away with for more than five seconds if your characters don't talk to each other. Happily for the plot, these two don't - instead, they go to bed together. Even the sex doesn't make for verbal intimacy. "How old are you?" Lily asks Marcus some pages later. "Why?" he replies, "What is all this?" - a question I was already asking myself.

Meanwhile, Lily starts seeing the ghost of Sinead all over the flat, and then discovers that the woman is not dead at all, but alive and well and nursing a broken heart. Now, I like a good spooky thriller as much as - or maybe more than - the next person. But this isn't one. The biggest problem with O'Farrell's ultimately limp tale is that once we know that Sinead is alive (and we find that out early), all we're left with is the story of how she and Marcus broke up. Nothing very spooky in that.

And I wish I could say that this story was surprising or told with some emotional depth, but it's not. The only mystery is how on earth O'Farrell could ever have imagined this was enough meat for a novel. Meanwhile, even the structure starts to wobble. Viewpoints shift, but reveal nothing new. Secondary characters gain sudden momentum, but shed no light on the narrative. And yes, they may be a little more interesting than the overwhelmingly pallid Lily - but if this isn't a story about her, then why did O'Farrell waste more than 100 pages making us feel it was?

And then there's the stickier problem of the prose itself. One of the most interesting truths about writing fiction - and one that any storyteller worth his or her salt learns quickly - is that less is almost always more. It's a liberation, that moment when you realise that, though a character may be walking across a room, you needn't necessarily describe the wallpaper and carpet - or, indeed, anything that doesn't propel the moment (or the plot) forward. O'Farrell hasn't learned this. Or if she has, she hasn't dared - and it does take daring - to begin to leave things out. She clings, GCSE-style, to her adjectives and adverbs, deadening her meaning with unnecessary similes and three-for-the-price-of-two ways of saying things.

Towards the end of the novel, we see Lily sitting in a London tube station, half-reading a newspaper. Except "her mind feels swollen, overblown: things sink into it, as if into wet concrete, never to be seen again". Meanwhile, her foot scuffs backwards and forwards over the floor and reaches the point "where the movement has created its own momentum, the pendular sweep powered by its own self- perpetuating physics".

If that means something to you, then you'll love this book. But I say, forget pendular sweeps, forget wet concrete, forget physics. Satisfying, engaging fiction has to have a thread that begins at the beginning and pulls you through, taut and unresisting, to the end. O'Farrell's thread comes undone only a few pages in. It's the weight of all that superfluous description - plus the burdensome sense that these characters don't know why they exist.

Julie Myerson's most recent novel is Laura Blundy (Fourth Estate).

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Review of ‘my lover’s lover’ by maggie o’farrell.

Maggie O’Farrell’s second novel is beautifully written and the style is my definition of accessible literary fiction. Although I really liked the first half of the book, the second half lost my attention somewhat.

The story is set in London and begins with a twenty-something, Lily, who meets an attractive man called Marcus – first, he helps her up when she trips over in the road, and then he happens to be at the party she’s going to. It turns out that he’s looking for a new flatmate. By coincidence, Lily is looking for somewhere to live. She moves into the flat, which is occupied by Marcus and his best friend Aidan. The problem is, the girl who used to live there – Sinead – used to share Marcus’s bed, a role which is now Lily’s. Sinead is a kind of ghost, haunting Lily and driving a wedge between her and Marcus.

There was a du Maurier Rebecca atmosphere to the first half. I liked that. However, the tension and broodiness seemed to lessen, as the other sides of the story were told. I wasn’t sure what the book was really about. I didn’t particularly care how it would end. Another problem was that I didn’t warm to any of the characters. I’m sure that I was supposed to like Lily at least. All the people and settings are very middle class and there could have been more variety. If we push all these problems aside, the writing was wonderful. O’Farrell is skilled at finding new and thought-provoking ways of describing ordinary things. Her style is quite poetic.

Having now read three of her novels (and abandoned another), plus her brilliant memoir , I think it may be a long time before I try any more of her work.

My Lover’s Lover was first published in 2002 by Review.

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5 thoughts on “Review of ‘My Lover’s Lover’ by Maggie O’Farrell”

Rebecca has been on my list for so, so long! I haven’t heard about this book until now, thanks for reviewing it! I’ve had the same thing happen to me with quite a few books last year. I’m afraid that some authors may be taking on a trend and then just losing passion or something in the middle because my interest would also be gone by then

Thanks for reading my review! 🙂 I don’t think the author lost her enthusiasm when writing this book, but she just deviated too much from the first half. It became a different kind of story. As it was published 18 years ago, it wasn’t part of the trend for Rebecca-like books that we are seeing lately.

Ooh, I see then. It seems like it was just a miss then 🙂

A shame this one started strong and then fizzled out a bit. Anything that feels at all comparable to Rebecca is going to pique my interest though!

I definitely liked the book at first, it was Rebecca-ish. However, suspense is not really O’Farrell’s style. Thanks for your comment 🙂

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My Lover's Lover

By maggie o’farrell, category: literary fiction | romantic suspense | women's fiction.

Aug 15, 2023 | ISBN 9780593684818 | 5-3/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9780593684818 --> Buy

Aug 15, 2023 | ISBN 9780593684825 | ISBN 9780593684825 --> Buy

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About My Lover’s Lover

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet comes an intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love, with all the frisson and psychological intensity of Rebecca. When Lily moves into new boyfriend Marcus’s apartment and plunges headlong into their relationship, she must contend with an intangible, hostile presence—Marcus’s ex-girlfriend, Sinead. As Lily and Marcus become more deeply involved, Lily becomes obsessed with Sinead’s fate and thinks she sees her everywhere. She must question not only her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or should, be with at all.

Also by Maggie O’Farrell

About Maggie O’Farrell

MAGGIE O’FARRELL was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), After You’d Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), and Instructions for a… More about Maggie O’Farrell

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My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell

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• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

blyttgh 's review

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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MY LOVER'S LOVER

Maggie o'farrell, . . viking, $24 (288pp) isbn 978-0-670-03215-0.

Reviewed on: 06/02/2003

Genre: Fiction

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My Lover's Lover

By maggie o’farrell read by julia watson.

4th September 2012

Price: £12.99

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Book Reviews

Big city devotees find romance in a small town in emily henry's 'book lovers'.

Carole V. Bell

Small-town love stories are a popular staple of romance novels and television, and many of them follow a certain pattern. These stories often convey a certain implied hierarchy of lifestyle choices: It's all about rejecting big city values and returning to life on a smaller and slower scale.

In the strictest versions of this fiction, small towns are lifesaving havens for burned out and jaded city refugees. Real estate development should always be scrapped in favor of historic preservation and charm. And career-minded, type-A women often have two choices: Let their hair down and let go of some of their ambitions or get left behind for earthier partners.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry is both a tribute to and takedown of this cultural form by a star of the summer beach read. Her playful and clever contemporary romance — her third — pokes holes in many of the assumptions that surround small towns in popular culture.

'The No-Show' is an adventure in romantic storytelling

To start, both of its leads are ride-or-die New York City devotees. Nora Stephens, the heroine and narrator of Book Lovers , is the kind of driven woman usually left behind when a leading man leaves for greener pastures, which has happened to her more than once.

Late for a meeting with Charlie Lastra, a fastidious book acquisition editor with the Midas touch, "uptight" Nora — the "manicured literary agent, reading manuscripts from atop her Peloton" — is reeling from being dumped yet again by a man who's moving to a small town, and thinking hard about this cliched plot turn:

[T]hat's why I'm running late to this lunch meeting. Because that's my life. The trope that governs my days. The archetype over which my details are superimposed. I'm the city person. Not the one who meets the hot farmer. The other one.

The lunch starts badly and gets worse. Since Nora processes life in terms of fiction, in her view, "If I'm the archetypical City Person, he is the Dour, Unappeasable Stick-in-the-Mud. He's the Growly Misanthrope, Oscar the Grouch, second-act Heathcliff, the worst parts of Mr. Knightley."

Two years later, that resentment remains. Grumpy, exacting Charlie is Nora's literary nemesis, the man who insulted and turned down Once in a Lifetime, one of her client's greatest hits. But when both Nora and Charlie land in the same small town at the same time, irritation yields to attraction.

The first sighting is a shock and an accident. Nora is checking about the cute guy in line for coffee. He turns around, and there's her grumpy Mr. Knightley. She tries to run off.

A few meetings later, it's clear that their surface rivalry masks similarities and chemistry. Nora and Charlie share the same ambitions and priorities, feel like outsiders, and most of all, are both very loyal to family. Though her favorite writer likens her to a shark (much to her horror), Nora mostly bares those sharp teeth in service of loved ones and clients.

Hard-edged in the workplace, Nora (named after the late romantic comedy luminary Nora Ephron ) has a deep dedication to being her younger sister's keeper — since their mother's death when Nora was in college. And that lands both women in the small town of Sunshine Falls, just outside Asheville, N.C., for a month.

Heavily pregnant Libby craves rest and time away from responsibility – and her cramped New York City apartment — before the birth of her third child, and she's excited to immerse herself in the storybook small-town life that Once in a Lifetime made famous, even if the town has seen better days.

Libby devises a list of experiences that she and Nora have to complete to attain the maximum "small-town romance novel" effect: Wearing flannel, going on at least two dates with locals, and saving a local business will transform them into more relaxed versions of themselves. A supportive and loyal Nora plays along without protest.

But instead of salt of the earth locals, Charlie and Nora only have eyes for each other. Of course, there's a catch. While Nora and Libby are in Sunshine Falls for downtime and adventure, Charlie is there out of necessity.

Though born and raised in the picturesque North Carolina town, Charlie never felt accepted there for reasons revealed later in the novel. He's returned only to support the family bookstore while his mother cares for his father, who's suffered a stroke.

That potential long-term responsibility threatens to derail their future as a couple — or leave Nora behind yet again. So while things heat up quickly, the "will they or won't they" energy persists.

That's one aspect of the novel that seemed a bit of a stretch. Given how in sync and smart Charlie and Nora are, I had a hard time believing they couldn't figure out a way to be together while still supporting their family.

Nonetheless, the story is multilayered and the characters' familial challenges are complex. By both playing to and overtly subverting romance tropes and archetypes like the high-powered big city woman who neglects her family and the life-affirming power of small-town life, this novel delivers an insightful comedic meditation on love, family and going your own way.

A slow runner and fast reader, Carole V. Bell is a cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity. You can find her on Twitter @BellCV .

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clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

‘The Love of My Life’ is a masterful domestic thriller with a doozy of a plot

In rosie walsh’s new novel, husband and wife think they know each other, but ....

Everybody who is married is married to a stranger. That’s the central premise of just about every domestic suspense novel ever written. In stories with these marriages, such as Daphne du Maurier’s “ Rebecca ” and Gillian Flynn’s “ Gone Girl ,” at least one partner (and sometimes both) has silently vowed to “love, honor, and deceive, till death do us part.”

“ The Love of My Life ” is a classic example of the “I married a stranger” domestic suspense plot — with a twist. Usually, the partner with a secret triggers suspicion in us canny readers early on. (That Maxim de Winter guy is too aloof, too insistent on having his own way to be without a tangled past.) But, Emma Merry Bigelow, the enigmatic heroine of Rosie Walsh’s “The Love of My Life,” seems so funny, warm, compassionate and kind that we readers root for her — even though we learn fairly quickly that she’s living under an assumed name and harbors a host of other secrets, something her adoring husband, Leo, doesn’t know about. Walsh just may have written the first domestic suspense novel in which the deceitful spouse is also a genuinely nice person. Maybe.

Walsh, whose 2018 debut thriller, “ Ghosted ,” was a bestseller, splits the first-person narration of this story chiefly between Leo and Emma. In the novel’s opening pages, Leo proudly tells us that his wife is an “intertidal ecologist, which means she studies the places and creatures that are submerged at high tide and exposed at low.” (Suspense metaphor alert!) Leo also affirms that Emma is a loving mom to their young daughter, Ruby, and their rescue dog named John Keats; she’s also a former star of a BBC series on marine wildlife and a recent cancer survivor. Then comes this kicker from Leo at the end of his opening testimonials:

“I think it was Kennedy who said we are tied to the ocean — that when we return to it, for sport or leisure or somesuch, we are returning to the place from whence we came. That’s how I feel about us. To be near to my wife, to Emma, is to return to source.

“So when I learn, in the days following this morning — this innocent, commonplace morning, with dogs and frogs and coffee … — that I know nothing of this woman, it will break me.”

Leo stumbles on the first of his beloved wife’s fibs because of his job: He’s a writer on the obituaries desk at a British newspaper, a department, he insists, is “the most cheerful desk on the news floor,” because “we spend our time celebrating extraordinary people.” Obituaries of famous people who are getting on in years or who have had brushes with serious illnesses are written in advance. Such just-in-case obits are called “stock.” Because of Emma’s BBC fame and her cancer, now in remission, she warrants a “stock,” and Leo, as the person who knows her best, accepts the assignment to write it. As he begins researching the facts of his wife’s life — clandestinely, so as not to upset her — Leo stumbles upon some “submerged” fibs the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.

4 great new mysteries and thrillers — and one to skip

Meanwhile, Emma is cautiously confiding in us readers, too. Here, for instance, are her thoughts in response to her doctor’s suggestion that she write a cancer memoir:

“I’ve read endless cancer memoirs in the years following my diagnosis; some written from the warm shore of survival, others cut short by an end note from a bereaved relative. … But every account … has talked about love. About how, as we approach the end of our life, we find ourselves turning toward the things and people that are most meaningful to us.

“ … My cancer journey, by shameful contrast, started four years ago with the rekindling of an obsession that could end my marriage. It’s been about fear of discovery and deep regret. It is something I could never commit to paper, or Facebook, or anywhere else.”

In a sense, the chapters of “The Love of My Life” that are narrated by Emma constitute her own alternate cancer memoir: her account of that obsession and its backstory. Along the way, at least three contenders for “the love of [her] life” surface.

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As appealing as the characters of Emma and Leo are, the essential draw of a domestic suspense story such as this one is its plot. Walsh concocts a doozy. Her narrative is studded with evasively worded passages that lure us readers into dead ends, switchback turns, false sutures between scenes and a startling final climax. All that passes for reality is unstable in “The Love of My Life.” By novel’s end, readers may even begin to wonder whether the name of that cute family dog, John Keats, is also an alias.

Maureen Corrigan, who is the book critic for the NPR program “Fresh Air,” teaches literature at Georgetown University.

The Love of My Life

By Rosie Walsh

Pamela Dorman Books. 384 pp. $28

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, my sailor, my love.

Now streaming on:

At the heart of “My Sailor, My Love,” the English language debut from Finnish filmmaker Klaus Härö , is a prickly tale of familial love gone sour and romantic love found almost too late. Although it attempts to tackle the heavy theme of generational trauma, it too often forgoes the more insightful aspects of its family drama in favor of an overly trite twilight romance.

Härö opens his film at group therapy, where women open up to each other about their life traumas. When it’s time for Grace ( Catherine Walker ) to share, she clams up, unable to voice what has brought her to the group. The film then shifts to a sweeping tracking shot of coastal Ireland, following Grace’s car to an isolated home right on the seashore. 

Here, we meet her cantankerous father, Howard ( James Cosmo ), a widowed sea captain who spends his days weaving and telling tall tales. It’s his birthday party, but Howard hasn’t even finished washing the dirty laundry he left in the sink. Her brothers arrive with tales of trips abroad but don’t bother to help Grace with the festivities. Howard even refuses to eat a slice of the elaborate chocolate cake Grace brought. It’s clear Grace’s traumas stem from the unhealthy dynamics at play in this splintered family. 

Fed up with his mess, Grace posts an ad at the local pub for a housekeeper, almost immediately hiring the gregarious older woman Annie ( Bríd Brennan ). When Annie cooks and cleans and chats about her grandkids, the gruff Howard insults her, and she leaves. Only to, of course, be wooed back by Howard’s apology and a bouquet of flowers. 

The rest of the film cuts back and forth between Grace’s disintegrating life as she loses her job and her husband and Howard and Annie’s burgeoning relationship. It’s the stuff of high melodrama but mostly played at a very muted pace. Grace and her husband have calm, cooled, collected fights rather than rage. Howard and Annie fall for each other through small, shared moments. 

While this all sounds very mature, the execution, especially with the romance, sorely lacks in subtlety. At one point, while picking apples, Howard and Annie reach for the same apple, and their hands graze. There is no hint of irony in how this hackneyed moment is filmed or employed. Aside from a little bit of chemistry and his ability to make her grandkids laugh, it’s hard to see what Annie sees in Howard. In fact, both characters are developed with such broad strokes, their personalities and histories so vague, what depth they contain comes solely from what Cosmo and Brennan bring with their quietly calibrated performances. 

Grace is at least given a much richer personal history, which is slowly teased out. At first, it seems she is just overprotective and controlling of her father’s life. Then, she appears jealous, as she reacts poorly to Howard’s relationship with Annie and the joy he seems to take in becoming part of Annie’s large, boisterous family. But eventually, we realize this growing tension between Grace and Howard stems from a lifetime of neglect and emotional abuse. Her pain from the kind of unique wounds that can only be inflicted by a parent on their child. 

Walker has the most difficult role here. Without alienating the audience, she must show Grace’s hurt, especially her anger. She does this mostly through body language; her constricted breathing clearly holding back years of anguish. Early on, her clipped sentences cut off just when she says something in mixed company that would make her appear to be the bad guy. It’s a dance she’s practiced for years, a trick anyone in this kind of abusive familial relationship knows all too well. When she does slip and say a little too much, it’s like she’s snuffed out oxygen for everyone in the room. And yet, there’s always a little bit of love left, stinging as it sticks in the back of her throat. 

"My Sailor, My Love" is at its best in these moments where it explores Grace’s pain—when it shows how it has poisoned her ability to relate to others, be it the other women in group therapy, her co-workers, her husband, or even herself. 

Unfortunately, because it also wants to be about the healing power of romantic love, Grace’s more nuanced storyline is shelved for long periods in favor of the more clichéd romantic beats of Howard and Annie’s story. And while their story wraps up in as mawkish a way as can be, at least "My Sailor, My Love" knows the final emotional beat belongs to Grace. It’s just too bad the filmmakers weren’t brave enough to make the whole film about her story, too.

Now playing in theaters. 

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture. 

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My Sailor, My Love (2023)

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Manitowoc County man pens book as ‘love story to my daughter’ about having a child with a disability

The book can be purchased through kindle and/or paperback at amazon..

WHITELAW — “What’s life like with a daughter with disabilities?”

Robert R. Lentz said he was asked this question so frequently he decided to write a book about living with his daughter Amber.

The farmer and retired construction worker penned “ Loving Amber: A Father’s Story ,” which he calls “a love story to my daughter.”

“Never could I have imagined the roller coaster ride my life would be with the birth of my daughter,” Lentz said in a news release.

Amber was born with a mild case of spin a bifida. She was learning to overcome the obstacles of that condition when she became severely brain-damaged by an unrelated outbreak of a disease called hemolytic uremic syndrome .

“It changed our lives forever,” Lentz said.

Check out these things to do: Easter Bunny at Manitowoc zoo Saturday — and more things to do this week

The book chronicles more than 25 years of living with a daughter with severe disabilities as seen through a father’s eyes.

“Loving Amber: A Father’s Story” is available through Kindle and/or in paperback copies at Amazon.com . Click here to order: https://a.co/d/iayule6 .

Contact reporter Patti Zarling at [email protected] or call 920-606-2575. Follow her on X @PGPattiZarling or on Instagram @PGPatti.

Advertisement

Trump’s Newest Venture? A $60 Bible.

His Bible sales pitch comes as he appears to be confronting a significant financial squeeze, with his legal fees growing while he fights a number of criminal cases and lawsuits.

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By Michael Gold and Maggie Haberman

• March 26, 2024

Before he turned to politics, former President Donald J. Trump lent his star power and celebrity endorsement to a slew of consumer products — steaks, vodka and even for-profit education, to name just a few.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added a new item to the list: a $60 Bible.

Days before Easter, Mr. Trump posted a video on his social media platform in which he encouraged his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” named after the ballad by the country singer Lee Greenwood, which Mr. Trump plays as he takes the stage at his rallies.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” said Mr. Trump, who before entering politics was not overtly religious and who notably stumbled while referencing a book of the Bible during his 2016 campaign. “It’s a lot of people’s favorite book.”

Though Mr. Trump is not selling the Bible, he is getting royalties from purchases, according to a person familiar with the details of the business arrangement.

Priced at $59.99, plus shipping and tax, the “God Bless the USA Bible” includes a King James Bible and a handwritten version of the chorus of Mr. Greenwood’s song, and copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance.

In his video, Mr. Trump expressed his approval of the book’s blend of theology with foundational American political documents, framing that mix as central to the political call that has been his longtime campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.

“Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country,” Mr. Trump said. Later, he added, “We must make America pray again.”

As he runs for president this year, Mr. Trump has framed his campaign as a crusade to defend Christian values from the left. He often makes false or misleading claims that Democrats are persecuting Christians. Last month, he told a religious media convention that Democrats wanted to “tear down crosses.”

His Bible sales pitch comes as he appears to be confronting a significant financial squeeze. With his legal fees growing while he fights four criminal cases and a number of civil lawsuits, Mr. Trump is also being required to post a $175 million bond while he appeals his New York civil fraud case — a hefty amount, though one that is significantly smaller than the $454 million penalty imposed in the case.

According to the Bible’s website, Mr. Trump’s “name, likeness and image” are being used “under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the business arrangement. But CIC Ventures is also connected to another product Mr. Trump has hawked while campaigning: $399 “Never Surrender” sneakers that he announced at a sneaker convention in Philadelphia last month.

Michael Gold is a political correspondent for The Times covering the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and other candidates in the 2024 presidential elections. More about Michael Gold

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

Our Coverage of the 2024 Elections

Presidential Race

President Biden raised $25 million  campaigning alongside Barack Obama and Bill Clinton  at a Radio City Music Hall event , and held a retreat the next day  for 175 major donors.

Donald Trump pushed his law-and-order message  at a wake for a police officer killed on duty.

Trump Media, now publicly traded, could present new conflicts of interest  in a second Trump term.

Donald Trump cast Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  as a liberal democrat  in disguise  while also seeming to back the independent presidential candidate as a spoiler for the Biden campaign.

Other Key Races

Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, abruptly ended her bid for U.S. Senate, a campaign flop that reflected intense national frustration with politics as usual .

Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte running for Senate in Arizona, is struggling to walk away from the controversial positions  that have turned off independents and alienated establishment Republicans.

Ohio will almost certainly go for Trump this November. Senator Sherrod Brown, the last Democrat holding statewide office, will need to defy the gravity of the presidential contest  to win a fourth term.

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Wild River: A Small Town, Enemies to Lovers Romance (Magnolia Falls Series Book 2) Kindle Edition

• Book 2 of 5 Magnolia Falls Series
• Print length 353 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date March 28, 2024
• Reading age 17 - 18 years
• File size 2180 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
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• By Laura Pavlov
• New Adult & College

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CN56W89F
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ (March 28, 2024)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 28, 2024
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2180 KB
• Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
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• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 353 pages
• #1 in New Adult & College Romance (Books)
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Laura pavlov.

Laura Pavlov is a USA Today and Amazon Top 5 Bestselling author who writes sweet and sexy contemporary romance that will make you both laugh and cry. She is happily married to her college sweetheart, mom to two amazing kids who are now adulting, and dog-whisperer to one temperamental yorkie and one wild bernedoodle. Laura resides in Las Vegas where she is living her own happily ever after. Be sure to sign up for updates on new releases. Laura loves to hear from readers!

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