Kincaid's ambitious new novel of Caribbean life (after Lucy, 1990, etc.) begins with the tantalizing promise of a memorable story about strong mothers and daughters—but then turns into a rhetorical riff on familiar ills of our time. Now in her 70s, Xuela, whose mother died in childbirth, tells of a life irrevocably shaped by a woman she never knew and by the children she herself never had. The idea of a daughter's life being as much her unknown mother's as her own is suggestive with dramatic potential, though here it seemingly becomes little more than excuse for a heavy dose of philosophy on the question of who one really is. Set on the island of Dominica, the tale is suffused with loss and angry grief: says the narrator, ``I came to feel that for my whole life I had been standing on a precipice . . . overwhelmed with sadness.'' Reared for seven years in the home of the woman who washes her father's clothes, Xuela learns to survive by depending only on herself. After she moves back in with her father and his new wife, these are skills that serve her well when her stepmother tries to kill her; and they're equally useful when, attending high school, she becomes pregnant by the man of the house she's then living in and coolly arranges her own abortion. But there's something increasingly indulgent, even cruel, in this self- sufficiency and anger, both of which come to seem more theme-driven than dramatically organic, a quality suggested also in Xuela's rigidly sustained indifference to the man, a British doctor and white, whom she finally marries after first seducing him and then helping his first wife poison herself. Because he's a colonionalist, it's not possible for Xuela to love him, no matter that he loves her deeply and wants to be with her forever. Vintage, tough, cool Kincaid prose, though telling a story that ultimately chills and repels. (First printing of 75,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-374-10732-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
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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