Fewer punches pulled might have made this a knockout.
Editor stares down 35 and societal pressure to reproduce in Giffin’s underachieving third (Something Blue, 2005, etc.).
It’s love at first date when motherhood-averse Claudia meets architect Ben, who seconds her dislike of (1) eating at TGI Fridays; (2) leaving Manhattan; and (3) having kids. They marry and revel in childfree-freedom, resisting the benign cajolery of his nurturing family. After all, they have her relatives to serve as advertisements for childlessness: Claudia’s narcissistic mother and feckless father; fecund Maura with the philandering husband; and fertility-challenged Daphne. But when the couple’s best friends procreate, and Claudia’s egg-aging watershed of age 35 looms, Ben has second thoughts about fatherhood. This leads to many pages of attempted relationship renegotiation, until finally Claudia divorces Ben and flees back to her former roommate, investment banker Jess. Claudia puzzles over Ben’s about-face, Jess has a pregnancy scare with her married lover Trey, and Claudia beds Richard, her boss at Elgin Press. Fleeting Ben sightings and Googling reveal that he’s found a new running partner with great hair, an ER physician named Tucker. The turning point occurs when Richard and Claudia jet off to Italy and he gives her a semi-precious right-hand ring, an objective correlative for “they’re just not that into each other.” Claudia realizes that she just might do anything to get Ben back, even something maternity-related. When her distracted babysitting lands niece Zoe in the ER for stitches, Tucker appears flaunting a wholly precious left-hand ring. The other baby shoe drops in an unpredictable-enough way, with a deft allusion to “Gift of the Magi,” but the novel ducks every challenge it poses for itself. (And some it doesn’t, like finding a simile for “attractive” besides “hot.”) The characters, puppets of the plot’s contrivances, dance around the central question: Is there something wrong with a woman who chooses to forego motherhood?
Fewer punches pulled might have made this a knockout.Pub Date: June 13, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-34864-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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
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
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