When I Fall in Love

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Laughter is the best medicine, Dart (Beaches) wants us to believe, and she makes her case in a risky, wrenching story with a curious flaw. Though the novel offers endless punning and stand-up material, it's rarely funny, and even with the comic spotlight on the so-unlikely-it's-inevitable romance between two Emmy-level TV comedy writers, Lily Benjamin and Charlie Roth, neither their initial antagonism nor eventual alliance makes for laughs. And given the plot, readers do need those healing peals. In the opening pages, single mother Lily's teenage son, Bryan, is shot; yesterday a promising tennis star, he now faces life as a paraplegic. Lily's fianc , Mark Freeman, a handsome, kind, terminally unimaginative cardiologist (he gives her heart-shape presents and uses song lyrics to speak his own heart), wants Bryan and Lily to feel the tragedy, mourn their loss, adjust hopes downward. But then there is Charlie, known in the TV industry as the God of Jokes. Crippled in infancy, he was encouraged by his parents to use a no-holds-barred humor as his weapon against prejudice and self-doubt. Charlie preaches a medicine of ruthless humor, toughness and, above all else, gratitude--for the cripple, in his view, is freed from the illusion of physical perfection and lives truer to his soul. This main theme is echoed in the subplot, in which Lily's chubby lesbian sister confronts the siblings' judgmental, snobby mother. Other minor characters, like the ensemble of sitcom-writing co-workers, are burdened with a nearly unbearable comic banter attempting an outr irreverence. Though her formula is decidedly Hollywood, Dart's message, that people aren't what they look like, is sincere; her book takes serious and heartfelt looks at the bigotries of able-bodied folk and the realities of the disabled. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Television comedy writer Lily Benjamin's life plays more like a tragedy. She's a single mother, her mentor just died, her son is paralyzed by a bullet, and the network hires the "God of Jokes," Charlie Roth, to produce her show. Her first meeting with Charlie is disastrous: she has no idea he has cerebral palsy. In fact, she's alternately repulsed by and ashamed of him. However, when Charlie convinces her son to see beyond his wheelchair, Lily must reexamine her own prejudices. Susie Breck gives an incredible performance; her slightly slurred, slow-talking Charlie conveys a real yet positive image. Breck handles the variety of other voices just as skillfully. However, she does not overcome Lily's unsympathetic character; Lily never develops appreciably as a person so is not believable when she declares her love for Charlie. Despite the fine reading, purchase only where Dart is popular.--Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Jamaica Plain, MA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Kirkus Reviews

Dart (Show Business Kills, 1995, etc.) returns with yet another commercial tearjerker, a story that has success written all over it. Herself a former comedy writer, Dart presents us with Lily Benjamin, TV comedy writer, whose 15-year-old son, Bryan, has his spinal cord severed by a jealous husband's gunfire. That's the opening scene, hinting horribly that this deeply amusing novel is going to veer off into sober melodrama before it ends. But it doesn't — it stays right on track for a soap-operatic climax. And Lily is surrounded by plum roles for actors. Her boss, hospitalized top comedy writer Harry Green, lies dying of cancer but still flowing with jokes and writing the latest episode of a schlocky sitcom. When Harry dies, he's replaced by Charlie Roth, the God of Jokes to all comedy writers. Sometimes referred to as Quasimodo, Charlie is a physical mess, with a head forever bobbing, a gait so rolling and twisted he can barely climb steps — and a face that's no pleasure to look at, either. When the comedy team gets to work on a new sitcom episode and Lily complains about their cigar smoke, Charlie hangs her by her ankles out the fourth-floor window. Yes, he's stolen this trick from Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks, but even so it doesn't endear him to Lily. Thus when Charlie, with humor and tricks, begins helping fellow cripple Bryan recover his will to live, Lily, now engaged to a blandly handsome cardiologist, is slow to respond. As for the climax, it will go down in pop history when it's filmed. . .