Zevin’s ambitious reach into the future may put off some readers, but others will warm to her clear-eyed compassion for...
Picture-perfect evangelical family spirals out of control.
Zeroing in on the high anxiety that credit-starved Americans feel in the current economic climate, Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, 2007, etc.) delivers a bitter yet believable portrait of the national dream gone terribly wrong. Broken into four sections that jump from 2000 to 2006 to 2012 to 2022, the novel chronicles the high times and bottom-hitting lows of a daydreaming dad and compulsive shopper mom who are trying to raise a family in the Seventh Day Adventist faith while keeping secrets that wreak havoc on their children. Roger Pomeroy is a 42-year-old former pastor who decides to go back to school and earn a doctorate, a decision that pushes his family to the brink of starvation while he carries on a sordid affair with his supervising professor. His wife Georgia, a data-entry clerk, is sucking the family credit cards dry to pay for the wedding of eldest daughter Helen. Despite their lies, Roger and Georgia are comforted by their faith. “The world tells you that all these secular debts matter, but my whole reason for being put here on this earth is to tell you that they do not. The only debts that matter are spiritual debts,” advises the preacher at their church. Georgia’s financial shenanigans, including the acquisition of credit cards in her children’s names, are hard on all the kids, but hardest on youngest daughter Patsy, who joins the Army in an attempt to earn enough money for college and is sent to Afghanistan.
Zevin’s ambitious reach into the future may put off some readers, but others will warm to her clear-eyed compassion for people doing the best they can and wreaking considerable damage along the way.Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1923-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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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