Word: nell
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...catalyst for all that follows is the fatal heart attack of Leonard Strickland, a gentle North Carolina lawyer fond of Montaigne and Cicero. After 40 years of his benign companionship, his widow Nell doubts her ability to go it alone: "He protected me from so much ... from my harshest judgments of myself as well as of others." Strickland's death also catches his two daughters at awkward points in their lives. Cate, headstrong and twice divorced, is approaching her 40th birthday and teaching English at a small college in Iowa; like her previous school in New Hampshire, this...
None of these problems is unique, of course, in fact or fiction, and Godwin never claims otherwise. She does make the three women who face them singularly interesting. They are all intelligent enough to wish, sometimes, that they were less so. Nell would like to blend comfortably into the extending circle of Southern widows in her town, but her acerbic side keeps her at a slight, disquieting remove. Cate periodically feels the urge to "lapse wearily" into a man's care and then bristles angrily at her own weakness. Lydia tries to organize herself into happiness, knowing that each...
...reputations of Nell Gwyn, Marie Antoinette and Lady Diana prove it: courtesans and consorts can lodge in legend as securely as the men they serve. They dress the naked throne of power with their glamour, sex, humanity; they provide a public-relations link between master and mass. They need do nothing special, for they become what they marry. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis only needed to sign a brace of marriage contracts. Because the other signatories were a young American as powerful as Minos and an aging Greek as rich as Croesus, she became the best-known woman in the world...
There must be an attraction of opposites: Ernie Souchak (John Belushi), a pudgy, wily, chain-smoking columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Nell Porter (Blair Brown), a Boston Brahmin working alone in her Rocky Mountain aerie to save the American bald eagle. They must "meet cute": assigned to write a story on the Bird Woman of Wyoming, Souchak climbs the mountain at risk of life and lung, falls asleep in Nell's cabin and is poked awake by her. They must reverse roles: he cooks goulash while she overpowers a pair of hunters. They must adapt their skills...
...good sitcoms and bad, and Continental Divide is superior. John Belushi has dispensed with his randy Neanderthal persona to play that most hallowed of Hollywood leading-man roles: the extraordinary ordinary guy. Blair Brown is an earthy aristocrat and a resourceful actress: her face puffs and blotches beautifully when Nell's emotions demand it. If they are not quite Tracy and Hepburn, they will do until the real thing comes along-on the Late Show, in Woman of the Year or Pat and Mike, models for Kasdan's artful updating. His script, and the movie, improve as they...