Word: melodrama
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This sea chant, repated at the story's climax, typifies Norman's highly personal approach to fiction. His story is extravagant melodrama, but his writing is strict, laconic and evocative. Birds, coves, proper names. Odd sources of enchantment, but real ones...
...Generations moves from disaster to disaster as despotic communism devours its own and Germany attacks and destroys millions more. Members of the Gradov family, led by Dr. Boris Nikitovich, make their separate ways through history. Aksyonov impressively spreads out a panorama of suffering, but he overlays it with shameless melodrama, unconvincing uplift and grotesque humor. Readers who sling their hammock, move their samovar onto their veranda and settle down for an old-fashioned summer read may be distracted by a narrative farrago that includes a scene in which Dr. Gradov nearly wins the Order of Lenin for giving Stalin...
...Grisham's attempt to distance his novel from The Firm's slick legal plot actually compromises the novel's success, Schumacher's pious adherence to the dramatic material of the novel--the Sway melodrama--significantly reduces "The Client"'s suspense potential. By the time Jones first appears (almost 15 minutes into the film as U.S. District Attorney Roy Foltrigg), we are beginning to wonder whether the "explosive secret" that Mark has learned is really important or whether the local authorities simply find the kid a good person to harass. With Jones on the screen as the ambitious and disgustingly smooth...
...those with a taste for both melodrama and irony, it would be appealing if Tisch -- widely considered the duller of the two men -- were cunning enough to use Diller as bait for an even more robust suitor. Why, it would be the stuff of network television. Greed! Lust! Power! Infighting! Backbiting! The Barry and Larry Show, with a few mystery guest stars, could be CBS's hottest program this summer...
Though it is not explicitly acknowledged, this torment seems to have been the inspiration for A Map of the World (Doubleday; 390 pages; $22), a mischievous and unsettling marital melodrama by Jane Hamilton, whose first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. Hamilton introduces us to Alice and Howard Goodwin, a handsome Wisconsin couple -- she a school nurse, he a dairy farmer -- who are the parents of two little girls and who could be exhibited at the state fair in the perfect-marriage pavilion...