An agreeable and generally absorbing second novel from the British author of the highly acclaimed contemporary pastoral In the Play of Fallen Leaves (1995). At a pace that can only be called leisurely, Pears traces the divergent though inevitably intertwined histories of the Freeman siblings over the 40-year period following their father's purchase of Hillmorton Manor, a huge storybook house perched on a hill overlooking a provincial industrial English village. Ambitious, overbearing Charles—whose manufacturing company prospers throughout the '50s and beyond—and his delicate, ``poetic'' bride Mary happily produce, then gradually quarrel over and stake claims to, three strapping sons and a dreamy, withdrawn daughter. Pears expertly limns the children's conflicting personalities (Robert, perpetually intemperate, is an especially vivid portrayal) and details their complicated relationships with family, friends, and servants—while also focussing, as it were, on the second Freeman son James, who survives a congenital deformity corrected by orthopedic surgery and who will find in his passion for photography both a refuge from the torments of growing and changing and a means of reconciling himself to the family he challenges, escapes, and, ultimately, realizes he needs. The narrative's omniscience is occasionally oppressive (laden with coy foreshadowings of later developments), and one feels the presence of a heavy authorial hand also in the recurring coincidences that suggest characters being foreordained for the paths they believe they've chosen. What keeps us reading are Pears's clarity and directness, and the ingenious detail with which both the Freemans' embracing environment and their varying accommodations to it are pictured. This novel does create a world, and does convey a sense of time passing, in a way that will give much pleasure to many readers. Not quite equalling its author's ravishing debut, but, still, a consistently entertaining and often captivating read. Several cuts above Delderfield and Cronin, and two or three below Angus Wilson, whose No Laughing Matter it resembles.
Pub Date: March 16, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18112-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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
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