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THE WEDDING

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Now in her 80s, West—founder of the Harlem Renaissance magazine Challenge and author of a novel and many short stories—checks in with this pleasant if scattershot tale of the black bourgeoisie in a Martha's Vineyard community called the Oval. It is 1953, and Shelby Coles is preparing to marry a white jazz musician, and the Oval's inhabitants are dismayed that someone "who could have had her pick of the best of breed in her own race" would choose to marry outside of it. West then recounts the Coles family history, most of which is palatable but irrelevant. Once Shelby got lost, and, because of her light skin, the people who found her had trouble realizing that she was the child being sought. So one woman asked her point-blank whether she was "colored," and Shelby responded, "I don't know." Shelby's sister, Liz, has married a dark-skinned doctor and given birth to an equally dark daughter, who is spurned by their light-skinned grandmother. Shelby and Liz's father has had an ongoing affair with a woman for many years while keeping up appearances with his wife, but, about to turn 40, his mistress has decided to marry someone else. Another island-dweller, Lute McNeil, who has had three daughters with three different white women, has decided that he should be the one to marry Shelby, although his reasons are never clear beyond a vague desire to be a legitimate part of the Oval. These stories, full of interesting detail, work hard at interpreting racial politics, but they are all cause and no effect. When Shelby finally agrees to meet Lute the night before her wedding, there is little sense that it is a result of earlier being chewed out by her father for not having seriously considered black men as potential partners, and in turn the tragedy that follows seems random. Although written with the sure hand of a practiced short-story writer, this doesn't achieve the resonance of a deeply layered novel. (Book-of-the-Month/Quality Paperback Book clubs featured selections)

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Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1995

ISBN: 0-385-47143-2

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994

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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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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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