After You

August 3, 1998
A postcard bringing news of a boating accident prompts a 34-year-old married woman to revisit her first love affair in Garrett's latest sentimental novel (after Because I Wanted You, 1997). In flashbacks recounted to her friend Jojo over lunch in New York's Central Park, Clare McClendon relives the passion she once had for fisherman Riley Brackett during the summer of her 17th year, which she spent in Maine after having been sent away from her Midwestern home while her mother was dying of cancer. Clare is now a successful TV broadcaster, but she feels estranged from her husband, Michael, who has become absorbed in his own mother's battle with cancer. When Riley's wife pleads for Clare's help because Riley's head injury has rendered him amnesiac about everything but their affair, Clare feels she must go to Maine to try to reactivate Riley's memory. But the still-besotted Riley is unwilling to hear that the years have wrought a great many changes, namely both their marriages and a hinted-at illness for Clare. The plot at this point becomes manipulative and maudlin; that Clare, too, has had breast cancer, a fact that she doesn't reveal to Riley, seems designed to keep readers reaching for Kleenexes. The accumulation of physical and emotional pain is artificially palliated by Clare's epiphany that all life is a risk and that, while "the sun is still shining," one should embrace both memories and hopes for the future. The ending, with Clare and Michael on a hilltop, has all the subtlety of a Hallmark card. Film rights to Mark Johnson Productions for DreamWorks. (Sept.) FYI: Annie Garrett is the pseudonym of Kelli Pryor, a "celebrity journalist."

September 15, 1998
Like Garrett's previous Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (LJ 1/96), this is the story of the reuniting of sweethearts after many years. Clare is dealing with some serious problems. Recovering from a mastectomy, she also suffers a loss of intimacy with husband Michael, who is stressed by his mother's demands as she succumbs to Alzheimer's. Into Clare's unhappy life comes a postcard from the wife of her first love, Riley. He has suffered a head injury and has forgotten his wife and children, remembering only his relationship with Clare from many years ago. Clare is asked to come and help him recover his full memory. She does so, and, in the process, she heals her own marriage. The ending somewhat redeems the contrived plot. Garrett (the pseudonym of former Entertainment Weekly staffer Kelli Pryor) has sold the film rights to DreamWorks. For larger popular fiction collections.--Carol J. Bissett, Dittlinger Memorial Lib., New Braunfels, TX

August 1, 1998
When a blow to the head renders Riley Brackett incapable of remembering anything beyond his love-struck summer 17 years ago with Clare McClendon, his anguished wife and two children can only wait for him to acknowledge their existence. Summoned by a postcard from Riley's distraught wife, Clare--who is struggling with her own foundering marriage and her mother-in-law's protracted death--returns to Maine with a well-intentioned desire to help but only vague ideas as to how. As she gets reacquainted with the rugged island she once called home, long-dormant memories resurface. Riley doggedly pursues the past; the locals watch their every move; and Clare discovers both how much and how little she has changed. Garrett deftly weaves vivid reminiscences and the confusing events of the present into a compelling narrative that dances around the romantic notion of a second chance for love, instead focusing on an exploration of what we do with the chances we are given. ((Reviewed August 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)