by Bernice L. McFadden ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2004
Graphic details aside: an old-fashioned, there’s-no-place-like-home melodrama complete with affirming life lesson.
Gritty but loving portrait of an African-American family’s indestructible ties.
Diagnosed with breast cancer, light-skinned, 30-year-old Camilla has to undergo a double mastectomy. When her doctor asks if there is a family history of cancer, she says no, but then—in chapters that form the heart of a story bracketed by her present experiences—begins recollecting the past she worked so carefully to escape. Though Camilla is now married to wealthy Bryant, she grew up in a crowded Brooklyn tenement. Grandmother Velma, born in the South, moved north hoping to make a better life for herself. But she and husband Chuck ended up raising three of their two older unmarried children’s kids in their small apartment. Velma had higher hopes for her beautiful, clever youngest, until teenaged Audrey Rose fell for no-good Leroy, got pregnant, and married him. Soon Audrey was on drugs, shoplifting, and turning tricks; Velma wound up having to raise baby Camilla too. As Camilla mulls over the past, she also recalls a visit from an aunt who had undergone a mastectomy, but she doesn’t tell this to her doctor. Growing up watching her mother disappear for months at a time—into prison, drugs, or someone else’s home—Camilla determined to make a better life for herself that didn’t include her dysfunctional relatives. She left home to attend college on a scholarship, cut off all ties with her family, and passed herself off as a child of privilege whose parents had died in a skiing accident. Buying her story, Bryant’s affluent, light-skinned family and friends easily accepted Camilla. But cancer changes everything—especially when Bryant starts cheating on her.
Graphic details aside: an old-fashioned, there’s-no-place-like-home melodrama complete with affirming life lesson.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-94796-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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