This captivating debut novel roams the dry valley of a rural English village during the summer drought of 1984, revealing lushness in simplicity and the awesome untapped power and wisdom of a girl on the verge of womanhood. Through 13-year-old Alison Freemantle, the youngest child of a once poor but now surprisingly prosperous farming family, readers discover the long and endearingly quirky history of the Freemantle clan. Alison has plenty of time to ponder the past and present (although rarely the future, which seems not to tempt these rural inhabitants), since the town floats in a state of limbo as a result of the severe drought that has ``poured a hot glue that slowed everything down.'' Alison makes the most of the heightened sensibility the weather invokes in her family and her neighbors, and with the free time afforded by the end-of-summer teachers' strike, she weeds her way enticingly through the family's sordid past. (Beyond the three generations in her house, the rest of Alison's relatives inhabit a derelict street called Rotten Row, where years of inbreeding result in the occasional ``unaccounted child here or a mismatched aunt there.'') Alison recounts her mother's discovery that her father was a closet alcoholic and how this disease eventually led to memory loss that keeps his family only faintly familiar to him. She breathes life into a vampy sister (at least she'll escape), her eldest brother, Ian (chess genius, heart-breaker, and heir to the farm), and her chubby brother, Tom (uncomfortable with people and ``bound to the land from birth''). She shares the development of a new and precious friendship with the son of a local viscount; and she offers details of other valley dwellers, including the rector's love affair with a Portuguese maid. Pears includes more tragedies (deaths, betrayals, illnesses, fires, disappointments) than successes. Yet this tale remains heartening as Pears reveals the secret beauty of the hard life of the land through unsentimental and magical prose.
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-423-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
