A nice soapy title for a nice soapy Krantz: the author’s usual up-market labels mixed with a little mother-daughter drama and some heart-wrenching terminal illness. Tessa Kent, born Teresa Horvath, becomes a big-time movie star at age 16, two years after giving birth to a daughter, Maggie, whom Tessa’s devoutly Catholic parents bring up as Tessa’s little sister. Tessa would tell Maggie the truth about her birth if her parents weren—t against it, and she—d do it again, later, if her career weren—t so demanding. And yet again later, except that she meets the love of her life, Luke Blake, a billionaire Australian for whom Tessa’s virginity is very, very important. (Happily for Tessa, the doctors sewed her back up after delivery: in Judith Krantz, all things are possible.) By the time Luke has finally died and Tessa is ready to spill the beans, Maggie (now 18) has learned the truth on her own and severed all connection to her family. She takes her small savings to Manhattan, rents a room with a motherly lesbian who paints miniature portraits, and goes to work for a prestigious auction house. When Tessa discovers she has an incurable cancer and not long to live, she resolves to win back her daughter’s love; to do so, she offers her world-famous collection of jewelry for auction, on the condition that Maggie will spend six months with her, publicizing the sale. As a teenager, Tessa bought her first pearls at Tiffany’s, but it was Luke who really taught her the way around a precious stone, buying her huge emeralds, diamonds, and rubies and sometimes covering her body with them while he made love to her. By the close, it’s Maggie’s own pregnancy that will finally bring the two women together. Not as much of a tear-jerker as one might expect, but with lots of Krantz’s signature glamour. (Literary Guild main selection and Doubleday Book Club; TV satellite tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 25, 1998
ISBN: 0-609-60309-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
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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