Awful. Just awful.
Masson, author of popular nonfiction that explores the emotional lives of animals, mixes ancient Sanskrit parables and sloppy psychology into an arch little fable that . . . explores the emotional lives of animals.
Gather round, uncritical fans, and listen to the tale of Billi, an Asian leopard cat living thousands of years ago in India. He likes to hang out in his favorite mango tree and think deep thoughts. Why are two-legs (humans) always rushing around? That little peasant girl staggering under a backbreaking load of firewood looks as if she could use a friend. Maybe he should get to know her. But what’s in it for Billi? Life seems so, like, meaningless. Time to get out of his mango tree and check out the wisdom of assorted Sanskrit philosophers. (These distracting excerpts are presented with academic exactitude, complete with fussy footnotes.) Billi speaks in the voice of a college sophomore majoring in Comparative Religion, with just a soupçon of surfer-dude casualness. Hey, how about that quote from the Dasabhumikastura! Is that Buddhist monk Kshemendra cool or what? Back to the philosophical road trip: a pissed-off cow makes it clear that being a living divinity is no big whoop. A brave, cobra-killing mongoose is beaten to death by a stupid human. A pet dog complains that his collective memory of wolfhood has been compromised by domestication. Then Billi meets this really hot cat, Moria. Hey, she wants to have his kittens—but is he ready to commit?
Awful. Just awful.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-47866-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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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