Suburban noir—dark, funny and sometimes creepy; readers may be surprised at the amount of empathy they end up feeling for...
A novel from Ginsberg (The Grift, 2008, etc.) about a middle-class, seemingly genteel San Diego neighborhood teeming with secrets that unravel in the aftermath of a California wildfire.
Spreading fire forces the residents to evacuate in October 2007. Once the neighbors return home, they realize that one of them has disappeared: Diana, a teenage mother who has been living in her father’s house for only a few months. Flash back to July and pregnant Diana’s sudden arrival—she had been raised by her African-American mother in Las Vegas—which badly disrupts the childless marriage of her dad Joe, a restaurant manager who has avoided any contact with his daughter, and his pretty blond wife Allison. Through the summer and fall Allison, who still resents that Joe pressed her to abort when she became pregnant early in their relationship, slips into a drunken funk, while Joe slides into an affair with a sleazy neighbor. Diana hangs out with Kevin, the neighborhood druggie. Kevin’s uptight parents Dick and Dorothy seem like Republican caricatures, but Dorothy is covering up more than her daily pill-popping. And her unlikely confidante is Sam, half of the lesbian couple across the street. Thrown together through their kindergarten-age sons, Sam and her younger lover Gloria left their husbands for each other, but their passionate relationship has been disintegrating since the ex-husbands sued successfully for custody of the boys. By the day of the fire, Diana has given birth to baby Zoë and rejected both Allison’s pressure to put Zoë up for adoption and Kevin’s marriage proposal. When the evacuation order comes, Allison leaves the house—and her marriage—assuming Joe will come home to get his daughter and granddaughter. But Sam is the one who finds Zoë alone in Diana’s bedroom. Diana’s disappearance exposes open wounds among all the families whose lives she touched.
Suburban noir—dark, funny and sometimes creepy; readers may be surprised at the amount of empathy they end up feeling for less-than-appealing characters.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-46386-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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
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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