Fork in the Road

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

There is never a dull moment in this charming story of a young Irish-American filmmaker who, while doing research in Dublin, encounters an extraordinary young woman. In a delightful "meet cute" scenario, Colin Coyne feels his pocket being picked in a Dublin pub and captures a tousle-haired colleen, Gina Furey, who bluffs her way out of trouble, but not out of his thoughts. Gina turns out to be a Traveler, part of the Irish gypsy underground. She and her family are criminals--pure trailer trash. Colin falls for her, anyway, and soon she is pregnant ("I use Irish birth control," she tells the stunned Colin. "Five Our Fathers and Five Hail Marys"). Colin smuggles her and her four-year-old daughter into the U.S., where his film career is just starting. Using his liaison with Gina as the basis for a screenplay, he is confounded when she turns out to be truly one of the Furies. Baby Shamus is born, cementing their relationship--Colin made a deathbed promise to his mother never to abandon any child he fathers--but Gina's behavior becomes more and more erratic and violent. In several sadly hilarious scenes, Gina's rapacious relatives descend in droves, at Colin's expense, on Colin's American home, pillaging and pickpocketing at will in the community. One sympathizes with Colin's predicament, as real life proves much more difficult than his imagined screenplay, and one even understands Gina, who is beautiful, sexy, intelligent and talented, but enjoys the chaos of her despicable family and life as a criminal. Hamill (3 Quarters and Throwing 7's) has perfectly captured the trill of an Irish brogue, and he loads the plot with remarkable twists, keeping readers in suspense until the final page of this lively, sad, humorous tale. Agent, Esther Newburg. Movie rights to Barry Levinson. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Twenty-five-year-old film director Colin Coyne goes to Dublin to write a screenplay about his alter ego Kieran, an Irish American from New York who goes to Ireland to find the girl of his dreams. Scripting his film as he lives it, Colin discovers that the line between art and life has been erased by Gina Furey, a gypsy he catches trying to pick his pocket in a crowded pub. Soon he's involved in a passionate but ultimately dangerous affair, with consequences that far exceed anything Colin might have imagined. Hamill, a New York Daily News columnist and author of the thrillers 3 Quarters and Throwing 7's, offers a lot in this engrossing tale--hot sex, a wicked sense of humor, rich local color, witty dialog, a bewitching character in Gina, an unpredictable plot, and a riveting love story that begins with obsession and ends in heartbreak. For all popular fiction collections.--Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.