Frucht (Are You Mine?, 1993, etc.) imbues a dreary premise (woman discovers lump in breast, is diagnosed with cancer, dies) with remarkable originality and insight, leaving the reader pondering the nature of life and death. Two dramatic things happen to museum curator Isobel Albright during one week in her 40th year. First, she discovers a tiny lump in her breast. Then, a few days later, the small midwestern museum where she works burns down. As Isobel joins her fellow employees in trying to salvage the charred contents of the museum's collections, she also quietly undergoes a series of diagnostic tests that eventually reveal that her lump is malignant; even with an aggressive course of chemotherapy, she's told, she has only a ten- percent chance to live. Counseled by her best friend, Martha, who flies in from Seattle, and by Martha's dreamy, quasi-clairvoyant 19-year-old son, Hercules, who's been sleeping in Isobel's guest room for a while (and whom sensible, responsible, unmarried Isobel adores), Isobel opts to skip the chemo in favor of fully experiencing the few months that she has remaining. Approaching her death as methodically as she's approached her life, she continues her work at the museum while beginning to review her own past. But desperate longings rise to the surface nevertheless, and the bright, joyous life that Isobel might have had takes on far more vivid life in her imagination than the sweet, faded memories to which she bids farewell. The experience of dying—of giving up what was and grieving for what might have been—is extraordinarily well captured in Frucht's sometimes whimsical, often luminous prose. A unique and memorable work, marking a new level of artistry for the author.
Pub Date: July 9, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-83507-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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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