A solid, well-written first novel that successfully avoids the saccharine and melodramatic.
Rather than the overwrought tearjerker it might have been—mother acts as surrogate for her infertile daughter—Kaplan (stories: Edge of Marriage, 1999) delivers an affecting and often biting portrait of family relationships.
Born without a uterus, Dale is desperate to have a baby. Adoption has proven difficult, and it seems all avenues are closed—until Dale reads in the paper of a woman who consents to carry a baby for her daughter. After much persuading, Dale’s 48-year-old divorced scientist mother, Maggie, agrees to bear the fertilized egg of Dale and her husband Nate. It seems simple enough (or as simple as these things ever are) to carry the child and at delivery hand it over to the new parents. What Maggie doesn’t count on is the growing attachment she feels for the baby growing inside, or Dale’s surprising detachment from both Maggie and the prospect of motherhood. But life becomes even more complicated for Maggie: not only does she fear her scientific research may again be put on hold (the first interruption to her work came with Dale’s birth), but she begins a passionate, uneasy affair with Ben, a fellow scientist and husband to her best friend Doris. When the baby is born, what Maggie has feared (or hoped) happens. Dale seems incapable of caring for Lily, and Nate is no help as he copes with the repercussions of an affair he had with a student. Maggie takes Lily, and she and Ben (Doris has kicked him out of the house), play at being young parents again. Kaplan’s instinct for character development succeeds in converting straight-from-the-headlines plotting into events that constitute natural progressions in already damaged lives. Though in love with Lily, Maggie knows the arrangement won’t last: eventually the pieces of normalcy will fall back into place, leaving all to reevaluate the meaning of family and trust.
A solid, well-written first novel that successfully avoids the saccharine and melodramatic.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2001
ISBN: 0-316-48211-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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
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