Dreams Are Not Enough
In this latest Briskin rags-to-riches potboiler, Alice Hollister, a migrant crop picker, metamorphoses into Alyssia del Mar, ``the ultimate screen love goddess.'' She marries into the powerful, cruel and inseparable Cordiner family, a Hollywood film dynasty-in-the-making, who snub her and make her the scapegoat for a variety of imaginary ills. The notable exception is cousin Hap, who falls in love with her. Alyssia never loses her down-home earthiness (she'll eventually run a school for farm workers) or her pain and shame over her past (she witnesses her mother bleed to death during an illegal abortion). Briskin's ( Too Much Too Soon, etc.) fluid prose and graphic sex scenes should keep the steamy pages turning, but readers may be frustrated by Alyssia's goody-goodness to the Cordiner clan, who vilify her at every opportunity, and her cloying, masochistic loyalty to her husband, Barry, a traitorous, impotent, alcoholic, unemployed hack writer with a massive inferiority complex. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild main selection. (February 12)