A formulaic allegory.
A young heiress, carrying out her mother’s deathbed wish, searches for her twin sister.
Özkan’s heroine, Diana, scion of a wealthy Rio de Janiero family of hoteliers, was named after the Roman goddess of the hunt. Twenty-four years ago, her beloved mother tells her, Diana’s father left, taking with him Diana’s twin, Mary, who was named after the Virgin. Before she dies, Diana’s mother instructs her to find Mary and gives her four envelopes containing letters from her sister. Diana does not really wish to embark on this quest. Her life has become a round of drinking with shallow friends, who fawn over her and call her Goddess. Bored with the gifts and accolades she receives every day, Diana goes walking in a seaside park, where a mischievous old beggar hints that Mary is actually very close to her. An artist, Mathias, captures her attention, and he thinks Diana is his soul mate. He can only be sure if he leaves Rio after their coffee date. (This is one of many pseudo-mystical koans seeded throughout.) When Mary’s letters reveal that, like St. Exupery’s Little Prince, she left her comfortable surroundings to take “responsibility for a rose,” Diana resolves to alter her own life. She’s off to Istanbul where Zeynep Hanim, a wise woman who inhabits a mysterious garden, promises to teach her, just as she had taught Mary before her, how to listen to roses. After Zeynep imparts contradictory advice, e.g., always be on time, but don’t hesitate to knock after midnight, Diana is ready for enlightenment. Soon, she’s listening raptly as two roses named Artemis (Greek counterpart of Diana) and Miriam debate the true meaning of holiness. But not until she returns to Rio will Diana solve the puzzle of Mary’s whereabouts. The message—that definition by others is no match for self-realization—is obvious. However, in failing to depict the depths of Diana’s pre-enlightened existence, Özkan minimizes the stakes that any novel of redemption requires.
A formulaic allegory.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-16230-5
Page Count: 242
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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
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