A desultory chronicle that’s a far cry from the passion of Deafening.
On her deathbed, an old woman recalls her life in this latest from the Canadian Itani (Deafening, 2003, etc.).
Lucky Georgie: She’s off to London to see the Queen. The 80-year-old Canadian widow was born on the same day as Elizabeth and, along with 98 other randomly selected guests, has been invited to a celebratory lunch at Buckingham Palace. But leaving her house in Ontario, Georgie mishandles her car, which sails into a ravine. She is thrown free and lands on her back, badly injured, but with a memory clear enough to give us her life story. It’s an odd frame, which might not matter if her story were more interesting. Georgie has always been a staunch monarchist, and she talks to Lilibet (the Queen’s childhood name) in her head. She has also had a lifelong interest in bones, which began when she discovered Gray’s Anatomy and fell in love with the illustrations. She never knew its owner—her grandfather the doctor, who was killed in World War I—but her grandmother, a midwife, was a strong righteous presence in her life, unlike her gloomy, withdrawn father, who owned a dry-goods store in the small town of Wilna Creek. It’s the women who stand out here, whether Georgie’s mother Phil, now a vigorous centenarian, or her driven daughter Case, who started her own theater in town. Georgie did have a long and generally happy marriage to Harry, a jeweler, despite his dark moods and a disastrous American honeymoon (the novel’s only other dramatic moment). But there was nothing vivid about him, and he clammed up completely in the months before his death from cancer. Georgie herself is strangely absent from her own life. There was no money for medical school, so she made do with helping out in the store and being a good wife and mother. “It’s been a privilege” is her clichéd conclusion.
A desultory chronicle that’s a far cry from the passion of Deafening.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-87113-978-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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
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