Intelligent escapism: Although grounded by social history, this novel has its head in the fairy-tale clouds, where good...
Three generations of independent women in a single family are fortunate enough to meet the loves of their lives.
Applying her gift for seamless and addictive prose to matters of the heart, the Booker Prize–winning British writer’s 17th novel (Making It Up, 2005, etc.) is a well-crafted, soft-centered object lesson in the random yet unique business of meeting Mr. Right. Well-bred Lorna Bradley bumps into gifted wood-engraver Matt Faraday in London’s St. James’s Park in 1935 and marries him against her snobby parents’ wishes. A few brief years of idyllic happiness—including the birth of daughter Molly—ensue, in a picturesque but unmodernized cottage in Somerset before World War II intervenes, eventually claiming the life of Matt in Crete. Heartbroken, Lorna turns to printer and family friend Lucas, later marries him but dies giving birth to their son. Molly grows up self-reliant and refuses to marry her wealthy publisher lover, even after becoming pregnant by him. She doesn’t meet her own romantic destiny—poet Sam—until many years later, at a literary festival. Her daughter Ruth, a journalist, makes a conventional marriage to Peter but falls out of love with him as the years go by and eventually ends up with academic and writer Brian, back in the idyllic country cottage (now modernized) where her grandfather’s mural of the dance of life still graces the bedroom wall. Moving at a cracking pace, Lively never strays too far from her themes of love and literature, words and pictures, lighting up the narrative with flashes of historical detail.
Intelligent escapism: Although grounded by social history, this novel has its head in the fairy-tale clouds, where good things always await.Pub Date: June 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03856-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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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