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LONDON LOVERS

Described as a narrative experiment, this wildly compelling novel ostensibly depicts the tender passion of an adulterous love affair, though in the end it becomes clear that it's also a highly original meditation on the tenuous links binding fact and fiction. At the heart of this work by Hardy, a noted Welsh-born scholar of Victorian fiction and author of the memoir Swansea Girl (not reviewed), is Florence Jones, a noted scholar of Victorian fiction and a Swansea girl herself. Hardy's first-person narrative, real, convincing, clearly heartfelt, continually implies not artifice but the depths of reality. Part of the authenticity is derived from the style—zig-zag tangents of memory that take us through Florence's 15-year romance with an American professor in Oxford. Mick, whose wife is deteriorating from multiple sclerosis, meets the independent, sexually adventurous Florence and falls in love. The affair the two nourish, described in touching and candid detail, has a bold sentimentality about it, more suggestive of Victorian devotion than of an illicit liaison. It ends with Mick's untimely death. Laced throughout the narrative are moments from Florence's past—pre-Mick—of Charlie, her Welsh soulmate but unreliable husband, Mel and Timmy, her in-between lovers, and family and friends who rush by in a seemingly random fashion, until the structure, sound as any scholarly work, shines through: The heading for each chapter is the starting point for a lifetime of memories in that category, offering a varied view of Florence through the ages. Added to the structural acrobatics is the thinly veiled autobiographical novel Florence is writing about her affair with Mick, completing Hardy's circle, audaciously teasing the boundaries between the fictional and the real. Above and beyond its ambitious structure, this polished novel of sex, love, and literature is poignant and engagingly romantic.

Pub Date: July 17, 1996

ISBN: 0-7206-0964-X

Page Count: 208

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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