Lacking coherent plot development and a single compelling protagonist, Hegi’s latest reads disconcertingly like snippets...
The German-born author breaks new ethnic ground to little effect in her tale of a child’s death haunting two generations of Italian-Americans in the Bronx.
Hegi (Stones From the River, 1994; The Vision of Emma Blau, 2000, etc.) chronicles a half-century (1953–2002) through the eyes of four members of the Amedeo family: Floria, her sister-in-law Leonora, and their children, Anthony and Belinda. Floria’s brother Victor, who inherited their mother’s love of cooking, starts a catering business and marries Leonora; Anthony is their only child. Floria weds Malcolm, a roofer from England who steals from his employees and periodically goes “Elsewhere” (jail), which means his wife and her twin girls, Bianca and Belinda, must move in with her brother. Tragedy ensues when seven-year-old Anthony encourages cousin Bianca, in her Superman cape, to believe she can fly to her father. She falls to her death, and this central event shapes every subsequent development. Floria takes to her bed and abandons her sewing business. Guilt-ridden Anthony retreats into silence. Leonora wonders whether her son has inherited a violent streak from her father, a guard at Sing Sing who frequently beat Leonora and later committed suicide. Though the loss of Bianca still resonates 50 years later, Hegi provides a slew of other dramas. Victor has an affair and tries to get an annulment before changing his mind and begging Leonora to take him back, which she does: “Because of the habits. Because of Anthony . . . . Because time will not be theirs forever.” Floria ditches Malcolm for his best man, the guy she should have married all along. Belinda finds happiness in her second marriage to a former priest, while Anthony, now a chef, fathers a son in an on-again/off-again marriage punctuated by six separations and five reunions. All these exits and entrances count for little beside Bianca’s death, which sits like an indigestible lump in the gut of the narrative.
Lacking coherent plot development and a single compelling protagonist, Hegi’s latest reads disconcertingly like snippets from a multigenerational saga.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-5598-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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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