A comical, honest love story between two lost souls who complete each other.
A beautifully woven novel about an unusual boy and how he finds his way.
Love for one’s mother does not always come easily, and such is the case for Jeromeo “Jerry” Clover in K.’s (Honey B., 2012, etc.) lyrical novel. Jerry’s mother, Helen, a flower child, rejects society’s expectations: She had Jerry as a single mom and changes her name to Starlight. She left Jerry in the care of her mother, Eileen, who raises him with the help of her second husband, Carl, with so much love that Jerry doesn’t even miss his mother or mind her absence. He comes to see Starlight as someone who found “the real world an interesting place to hang out for a while, appreciating the customs of its citizens enough to visit but not stay.” Starlight visits Jerry sporadically, but she’s mostly a nonentity in his life, and it’s his stepgrandfather who ensures that Jerry goes to college. Upon graduating, Jerry begins working, first as the manager of a small chain of batting cages, where he quickly learns how to turn an average business into something more successful. He enjoys the work until an injury forces him to leave and find something new; he eventually enters the towing business. Tragedy strikes suddenly when Carl dies of an aneurysm, and things begin to shift dramatically for Jerry, who is now 30. Eileen decides to take in a young divorced woman, Rose Hardeen, and her two kids, to live with her and Jerry. As the families live side by side, a romance ignites between Jerry and Rose. Told in a poetic and insightful manner, Jerry’s story is funny and touching as the young man learns to find his way through relationships, having had such disrupted ones of his own. As he learns to be a father, without having really been a son, Jerry learns a lot about himself and the people around him.
A comical, honest love story between two lost souls who complete each other.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466220157
Page Count: 180
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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