by Patricia Kullberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 2015
A historical novel whose empathetic view of women’s lives—and the decisions they face—is welcome in any time period.
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Kullberg offers a debut historical novel set amid the illegal sex and abortion trades of mid-20th-century Portland, Oregon.
When 16-year-old Mae Rose’s mother, the proprietor of a shabby rural Oregon rooming house, dies during an illegal abortion, Mae is left alone in the world. She makes her way to Portland, finding that, at the height of the Great Depression, no one in the big city cares whether an orphan girl lives or dies. After nearly starving in the streets, getting sexually harassed by a potential employer, and briefly falling under the sway of a brutal pimp, Mae meets her friend and savior, a beautiful, mixed-race, opium-addicted prostitute named Trudy. Mae’s short, rough life has shown her that men will always treat her as a sex object, so she decides that she might as well take control of the situation and earn some good money. She and Trudy become popular call girls among the corrupt political and business elite of World War II–era Portland. After falling in love with a polio-stricken investigative journalist and receiving an illegal abortion from real-life society figure Ruth Barnett, Mae quits sex work to become Barnett’s assistant. This position gives her a firsthand view of the persecution of abortion providers in the reactionary postwar era. Kullberg’s novel is a clear polemic: she wants to illuminate the conditions that preceded the legalization of abortion in the United States and to highlight the contributions of pioneers such as Barnett. Even the greatest polemic novels—such as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here (1935)—can’t avoid making heavy-handed plot points, as Kullberg’s does. Still, the author’s sensitive portrayal of Mae and other young women as they face dire situations humanizes the narrative: “So profoundly had she been excavated,” Kullberg writes of Mae after her abortion, “she felt neither relief nor regret. Only a spooky absence of sentiment, as though her feelings had been scoured out as well.” Ultimately, the nuanced characterization and social message serve each other, reaffirming the idea that the personal is indeed political.
A historical novel whose empathetic view of women’s lives—and the decisions they face—is welcome in any time period.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941072-24-0
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Bygone Era Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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