by Marcia Willett ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
So soothing it’s in danger of being soporific.
A family’s secrets are finally aired as three aging sisters reunite in an idyllic country-house setting: another in the cozy, milk-and-cookies genre.
The secrets that have been hidden over the years are the genteel kind: adultery, a pregnancy, an argument that may have caused a fatal accident, nothing too sordid. But all secrets bear their freight of hurt, so as siblings Mina, Nest, and Georgie revisit the past, the experience is often painful. The story begins when Georgie’s daughter Helena asks her aunts to look after her mother, who has developed Alzheimer’s, until space in a nursing home becomes available. Mina is a widow; Nest, the unmarried youngest, has been confined to a wheelchair since the car accident that took the lives of their sister Henrietta and her husband Connor. Georgie has always spoken of secrets that only she knows, and Nest is especially worried about what she might now say. Georgie is often lucid, but taking care of her exhausts Mina, who confides her concerns each night via e-mail to Elyot, whom she met in an online support group. As weeks pass, the sisters learn the truth about their mother Lydia’s affair with Timothy, a friend of their father’s. While Dad was living in London with his mistress, Timothy fell in love with Lydia and fathered one of the siblings. Mina ruefully recalls how she broke up with her true love, a soldier, while Nest remembers her deep feelings for the much older Connor. He gave up Nest when he was introduced to her glamorous sister Henrietta, but not before getting her pregnant; a suitable home was found for the resulting daughter. Parentages are revealed, as well as new and old loves.
So soothing it’s in danger of being soporific.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32777-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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