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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can't Believe It!, November 12, 2007
This review is from: Brilliant (Paperback)
I absolutely cannot believe the talent of this author. In her third book, Roberts has truly blossomed into a world-class storyteller who can compete with the likes of the masters of this genre - Radclyffe, Kallmaker, Maas and others. When I finished the last page, I immediately flipped back to page one to start all over again. I have only done this two or three times in the past, but just couldn't walk away from this masterpiece. In fact, halfway through I contacted several friends to highly recommend `Brilliant' because that's exactly what this book is.
Diane is a gay college professor who lives alone almost cannot remember what romance is. Having recently reached the ripe old age of forty, she seems pretty happy with her life. That is, until she meets the enigmatic - and very young - Ronnie. Their first meeting yielded unexpected results. Those results are embarrassing for both women when they meet for the second time in Diane's classroom... where Ronnie is the student.
The head of the department seems out to get Diane and steals her teaching assistant soon after school starts. This coincides with Ronnie's delivery of a brilliant class paper that Diane believes is plagiarized. Threatening to give her student a failing grade, Diane agrees to let Ronnie walk her through the younger woman's research process. Finally realizing that Ronnie actually did write her paper - and becoming desperate for a teaching assistant - Diane offers Ronnie the job.
As these two women become more dependent on each other, their lives begin to change. Diane begins to wonder how she ever spent life alone. Ronnie falls in love for the first time and realizes monogamy is a treasure. The only problem is - can these two women ever really be together considering the difference in their ages, experience, and desires?
Truly wonderful and captivating, I highly recommend this book to anyone who's ever been in love. The reader will find themselves yelling out loud to the characters trying to get them to listen to reason and their hearts. An unexpected ending tops off this brilliant book. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy today.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More than May/December, August 26, 2007
This review is from: Brilliant (Paperback)
Brillant attracted me because it was teased in a general description to highlight a professor in her forties and her much younger grad student.
As the lines between professionality and personal life blur for Roni, the student, and Diane, Diane has to learn to make some very difficult choices. For Roni, this is her liberating moment in her life, away from home and her family.
What worked: loved the chemistry for Roni and her roommates. It felt very ecclectic. At times, it felt over the top, but it was sweet and the additional cast of characters weren't useless, they all played an important role. I also liked Roni as a very 'hidden' lesbian. No one was really clued into her being a lesbian unless she let them know. It wasn't that she wasn't proud of her self being, it was simply just how she was that being gay wasn't the only part of her that people needed to know.
What didn't work: Diane being so removed from her feelings for Roni that she completely cut Roni out of her life for a large segment. I also had trouble following Roni as she returned to a life style that she had given up as a child. I got a little tired of Roni trying so very hard to pull Diane from her rigidity and Diane stodgedly resisting straight through.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An enjoyable romp through academia, November 30, 2007
This review is from: Brilliant (Paperback)
This book was well-written and competently edited. The characters were interesting. It wasn't perfect, but definitely worth a solid 3 stars.
First of all, I'm a sucker for the whole 'we mustn't get together logically, but emotionally we can't deny our chemistry' story lines. There's an urgency to the characters' actions, and built in conflict and drama as they wrestle with these disparate parts of their own minds. So this book started out really well for me, but things became kind of frustrating for me as the characters made the same mistakes repeatedly.
Ronnie was an intelligent, vibrant and courageous character. Diane's fears and issues were understandable and well-presented and defended. These women were three-dimensional.
But the middle-to-end of the book dwelt a little too much on Diane's wallowing versus Ronnie's triumph, which I felt was a shame. On the one hand, Diane deserved to wallow, so it was good to have her going through and feeling pain and regret, but on the other hand this reader kept waiting for her to wake up, so instead of enjoying myself reading the book, instead I'm trying to figure out the point of being forced to dwell on her deserved but ultimately tiresome self-flagellation, when I just wanted to reach the end of it. Was the point not to let our fears rule us? Not to give up on life? The whole thing just lost some steam at this point.
But ultimately the ending was good and satisfying, though it was a bit annoying in that it seemed that neither partner was willing to put up a proper fight for their relationship. Did it mean a lot to them or not? However, perhaps this just reflects the dominant theme of the book, which seemed to be that differing perspectives are necessary to create balance: they needed to be together to find that fight.
Overall it was a fun read and pleasant journey through college, friendship, academia, family and love.
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