A lyrical description of a family’s search for their daughter and for their humanity.
Debut author Zilelian’s story follows a family of Armenian immigrants struggling to adapt to the American way of life while also contending with traditional coming-of-age conflicts.
While navigating issues of immigration and cultural assimilation, the family struggles with its own inner dysfunction: two parents embroiled in an unhealthy relationship, a missing daughter, and another daughter desperately grappling with the disappearance of her sister. As more characters become involved in the drama of finding Araxi, the family is forced to begin communicating. Though painful, this communication breaks open new opportunities for growth. Told in third person, the novel shifts to a new character in each chapter, allowing for the slowing of time and a careful view of how each character’s life is affected by the developing plot. Concrete details—ragged robes, chipped coffee mugs, leaky toilets, and worn, old music boxes—bring the domestic landscape to life, offering more than just a generic suburban family for the reader to hear, see, and sometimes smell. Voices are unique, from the annoyed, depression-dulled voice of the mother to the feeble, yet intelligent, voice of Sophie, the younger daughter. Sophie’s fascination with Araxi and her sister’s companion, Cecile, comes through in her thoughts: “She pictured them walking alongside each other, Araxi with her long dark hair and brown eyes, hands shoved in her pockets, and Cecile with her shoulders thrown back, and her waist length blond hair tied in a high ponytail.” The story shifts back and forth from the narrative of the family, aching for information about Araxi, to the journey of Araxi and Cecile, both of whom have run away and must face obstacles on the road, at motels, and with one another.
A lyrical description of a family’s search for their daughter and for their humanity.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0990573227
Page Count: 200
Publisher: BH Publications Pte Ltd.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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