An intriguing concept, woefully underdeveloped.
Four women are sentenced to a very unusual anger-management class.
Olivia, a Chicago psychotherapist, is launching a daring new variant of the anger-management group sessions she has been leading for years. Her latest patients have been court-ordered to attend the class in lieu of jail, after angry outbursts landed them in the criminal-justice system. Kit went after her brother with a broken bottle after he criticized her care during their elderly mother’s final weeks. When a deal falls through, Jane, a once-affluent broker whose business was decimated by the Crash of ’08, beats a colleague with a stiletto shoe. Exhausted after a hard day of nursing, Grace reacts to her teen daughter Kelli’s disobedience by wrecking Kelli’s boyfriend’s car. Leah, who lives in a domestic-abuse shelter, hits one of her children. To varying degrees, all four patients have man problems. Olivia, abetted by her amazingly sentient cocker spaniel Phyllis, challenges the women with assignments that reflect the unspoken longings of each: Jane is sent on a nature hike and to a children’s birthday party, and Kit to a comedy club. Leah is chauffeured for a mani/pedi, and Grace escapes from a singles event to close a bar with a fellow divorcée. Group excursions include sessions at a rifle range and a bowling alley. All the women, including Olivia, harbor secrets. The framework of an anger-management class offers many opportunities for spellbinding storytelling, and Radish avails herself of almost none. Too often the women’s debacles provide a platform for platitudinous preaching and pat affirmations rather than for insightful examination of their anger issues.
An intriguing concept, woefully underdeveloped.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-553-38476-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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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