Next book

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

A pleasurable if predictable first novel combining flashbacks of Oxford's 1960s counterculture with a tantalizing and barely disguised version of a modern-day American political campaign. Annie Paxford is a British literary agent with a brilliant career, a loving husband, and three well-adjusted teenage children. But she has been holding back a potentially explosive secret from her days as an Oxford undergraduate: a brief but passionate affair with American Rhodes scholar, saxophone player, draft-dodger, marijuana-smoker, and Fleetwood Mac fan Jordan Hope, the man who is days away from becoming president of the US. Son Tom, just beginning his own Oxford education, discovers an old photo of Annie with Jordan, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance; when his mother hedges her answers to his questions, Tom decides to investigate. Within days of discovering his incomplete birth certificate, he's in New York, where godmother RoseAnnie's best friend from Oxford, an infamous and glamorous expatriate magazine publisher (think Tina Brown)is determined to prevent her naive godson from ruining both Jordan's campaign and Tom's own relationship with his worried parents. While Tom is wined and dined by the seductive Rose (who teaches him far more than how to shop at Barneys), Annie launches her own business, engineers a $2-million book deal, and reunites with Jordan in Chicago for one forbidden, unforgettable night. Any pollster could predict Tom's return to England, Jordan's victory, and Annie's inevitable discovery that true love has been waiting all along at home. Sisman was a classmate of Bill Clinton's at Oxford, and her ``fact is stranger than fiction'' approach, though potentially dated and tedious, actually comes across here as well-crafted and fresh. Light stuff, but buoyant and fun. (Literary Guild alternate selection)

Pub Date: Aug. 21, 1995

ISBN: 0-525-93872-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995

Categories:
Next book

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

Categories:
Next book

MAGIC HOUR

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

Categories:
Close Quickview