Another winner from the author of, most recently, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Feb. 2003).
Buchan again agreeably celebrates a middle-aged woman’s use of guile and smartness to score subtle points and victories in taking back her life from a demanding husband.
Though Fanny Savage loves Will, the truth is that ever since they married—they even had to cut short their honeymoon because a sudden election was called—she’s had to be the loyal political wife: the wife who never knows when he’ll be home, who is unable to have her own life because she must be supportive, attend local events, and put up with the aides who virtually live in her house. Will is now a cabinet minister in the British Parliament, dreaming of even higher office and relying on Fanny’s unswerving loyalty. Chloe, their only child, is about to graduate from high school, and Fanny realizes that time is passing and that she needs something more in her life than family and politics. She’s also tired of coping with Will’s alcoholic and divorced sister Meg, who lives with them. Meg is there because she raised Will after their parents died young, but she is opinionated, intrusive, and frequently unreliable. Fanny used to help her own Italian-born father run his wine business, but marriage to Will ended that. Now, feeling restless and resentful, she decides to make some changes—but then her father suddenly dies. Distraught and needing time alone, she takes his ashes back to the Italian village of his birth. There, finding peace and a sense of belonging, she’s not only tempted to stay but to have an affair with an old lover, now back in her life. As she ponders what to do, life suddenly gets tough for Will when Meg dies in a drunken fall; he loses an election; and he fears that Fanny won’t come back. But Fanny, realizing that she still loves Will, knows how to use his vulnerabilities to gain some advantages of her own.
Another winner from the author of, most recently, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman (Feb. 2003).Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03280-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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