August 26, 2002
Sparks (A Bend in the Road, etc.) logs more miles on the winding high road of romance with the story of two middle-aged people who meet by chance in the small North Carolina coastal town of Rodanthe. The impassioned but doomed romance seems to owe much to Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County. Once again, a housewife who has focused on everyone but herself indulges in a brief, intense, secret affair with a stranger who changes her life forever. As the story begins, Adrienne Willis is 60, the divorced mother of three grown children. To help her troubled daughter cope with the untimely recent death of her husband, Adrienne tells her the tale of her love affair, which took place 15 years before. At the time, Adrienne was an uptight matron whose ex-husband had just left her for a younger woman. This rejection colors her entire life, and Sparks realistically portrays a vulnerable and isolated woman who throws herself into raising her children to escape her despair. Paul Flanner, her paramour, is a surgeon and an obsessive workaholic with no genuine connection to his wife or son, whose world completely falls apart when one of his patients inexplicably dies. Sparks builds a taut, plausible relationship between his protagonists, but even fans may be irked by the obviousness of their story and the inevitability of their fate. Agent, Theresa Park. (Sept. 18)Forecast:The obvious echoes of
The Bridges of Madison County are more likely to hurt this title than help it, but Sparks has a proven track record, and major television and print advertising and a 25-city author tour should inflate sales.
August 1, 2002
Sparks, popular author of several romantically themed best-sellers, including "Message in a Bottle" (1998), is back at it with his latest mix of love story and pathos. He doesn't disappoint, whipping up plenty of melodrama in the story of two shattered people, both badly scarred by past experiences, who find each other late in life and realize they are soul mates. Adrienne Willis is a 45-year-old mother of three whose husband recently abandoned her for a younger woman. When she visits the small coastal town of Rodanthe, North Carolina, seeking a bit of respite from her problems, she meets Paul Flanner, a 54-year-old doctor who has sold his thriving medical practice and come to Rodanthe to escape his own tortured past. Despite their short courtship, the two find themselves falling madly and passionately in love and vow to spend their lives together. Unfortunately, Paul needs to make amends with the son he has long neglected and so embarks on an ill-fated trip, which leads to heartbreak. Sparks has a very solid fan base, and they will be clamoring for his latest. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)