Beginner's Greek

December 31, 2007
Often the audio medium can make a book an even richer experience, as elegant phrases and colorful characters are brought to life. Unfortunately, this production amplifies the novel's flaws. Peter keeps missing chances to reveal his true feelings of love to Holly, a woman he met by chance on a plane and who married his best friend. The book's clunky, repetitive prose ("This was flattery, meant to amuse and flatter her") comes across worse to the ear than to the eye. The abridgment is often confusing and reduces dialogue scenes to dry summaries of discussions, but some of this is the author's fault. Instead of allowing the listener inside the heads of the characters, Collins simply describes their motivations in a detached, clinical way. This technique is more detrimental on audio than in print. Jerry O'Connell's bland, uninspired narration doesn't bother to differentiate character voices at all, apart from pitching his voice slightly higher for women's dialogue. He self-consciously enunciates each syllable, instead of using his acting skills to convey emotion or bring the story to life. The result is an audiobook as tedious as one of Peter's business meetings. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 1).

Starred review from October 1, 2007
Peter Russell, an up-and-coming financial trader, is a romantic at heart. As he boards a transcontinental flight to Los Angeles, he is eager to see who will sit next to him, fully expectingif it's a femaleto find his true love. When the captivating Holly takes the seat, Peter is convinced he was right. Imagine his dismay after parting when he loses her phone number and realizes that he doesn't know her last name. So begins this tale of star-crossed lovers and their circle of family and friends. Peter and Holly will each travel a perilous path over the years to come. Treacherous office politics, adulterous liaisons, and a host of fascinating characters round out the story. Despite the contemporary setting, Collins's fiction debut has all the traits of a 19th-century romancean omniscient and sometimes playful narrator, elegant prose that meanders through the lush terrain of disparate lives, an occasionally arch but always dulcet tone, frequent flashbacks, characters whose minds are plumbed (the females are especially well sounded), sophisticated dialog, and a much-delayed but delightful resolution. Jane Austen fans will feel right at home. Recommended for public libraries.Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2007
The two young professionals of Collins's polished debut, Holly and Peter, meet on a flight bound from New York to L.A. They tacitly understand they are soul mates, and she invites him to dinner, but Peter soon discovers that he has lost the number Holly wrote on a page torn from Mann's The Magic Mountain
. With Peter's financial career and New York society as a mundane backdrop, years pass and Holly ends up married to Jonathan, a successful author and womanizer—and, conveniently, Peter's best friend. Still aching for his one-time seatmate, Peter marries Charlotte, a dull Francophile, because it “made sense.” Charlotte, of course, is also in love with someone else—a former flame, Maximilien-Francois-Marie-Isidore. At Peter and Charlotte's wedding, Jonathan is struck by lightning, precipitating an endless series of events that changes the lives of family, friends and lovers alike—including Peter's boss and Charlotte's ex-stepmother. Former Time
editor Collins, 48, writes as if fully aware that anyone who saw any one of a thousand other romantic comedies will find the plot familiar: he plays romantic comedy clichés with an expert coolness. Anyone for whom chick lit is a guilty pleasure will find the tone here multiple notches above the usual fare.