Rather than harmonizing disparate scraps, this quilt leaves the highly wrought patches unstitched.
Quiltsgiving is a new tradition at Elm Creek Manor, and this November, the women will devote themselves to making quilts for Project Linus, which gathers homemade blankets for needy children. In giving to others, they may heal themselves.
The latest in Chiaverini’s (Sonoma Rose, 2012, etc.) prolific Elm Creek Quilts series finds women gathering at Elm Creek Manor. Focusing on five of the participants, Chiaverini relates each woman’s sufferings in mind-numbing detail. A member of the renowned Cherokee Rose Quilters, Pauline has forsaken her own guild’s retreat to come to the Manor. Although she loves her guild, she cannot understand why one of the other members is so hostile toward her. Hostilities have escalated so far that she is contemplating leaving her beloved guild. Linnea, a librarian, has spent the last months battling Close the Book, an organization intent upon closing her library, and the tempers get hotter every day. Michaela, the youngest quilter at the retreat, arrives on crutches, her ankle ruined and her dreams of professional cheerleading dashed. But was her fall at tryouts an accident or something more sinister? Recently widowed, Jocelyn has stepped into her late husband’s role of coaching their school’s Imagination Quest. Working with the children was fantastic, but possible cheating at the competition troubles her. Karen, one of the most talented quilters, worries that her beloved shop may not survive in the face of Internet stores. The women bond in conversation, telling their stories, detailing their slights and questioning their own reactions. These ironically self-centered women gain much more from Quiltsgiving than they give. Project Linus becomes little more than the backdrop for yet another story about women offering each other support to return home and face their troubles.
Rather than harmonizing disparate scraps, this quilt leaves the highly wrought patches unstitched.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95360-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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