The story might have been fleshed out a bit more, but, still, it’s a nice enough little take on a nostalgically comfortable...
An episodic debut tells the very conventional story of a young woman’s coming of age as a wife and mother in the 1950s, while at the same time revealing the political and social tenor of the decade.
Whether or not it’s a roman à clef, it certainly has the tone of one as Emmet takes us through the events in the early married life of Liza and Julius Prescott. They’re newlyweds who purchase a house in the Massachusetts town of Rock Hill; he’s a lawyer, she’s an educated woman whose career ambitions seem to have melted away the moment she met Julius. Rock Hill in the mid-’50s is more rural than suburban, so newcomers Liza and Julius join the eponymous Mr. and Mrs. Club to make friends. The little clique they eventually fall into includes busybody housewives and a young mother who sublimates her frustration and her alienation (she’s from West Virginia) through cooking and baking—but the Prescotts also manage to become friendly with the town’s elite family. Liza must learn to deal with her own frustrations, to which Julius, at least from Liza’s perspective, is generally oblivious. Because the narrative jumps around so much, glimpses of the Prescott marriage are substituted for a developed plot: the narrative travels down too many paths, some of which turn out to be melodramatic dead ends. The author’s strong point, though, is characterization. The wealthy, the young men on the go, the old townsfolk, and the young mothers with too much time on their hands make up a wonderfully drawn amalgam; their dialogue, as much as anything, reveals their true natures and these in turn provide a window to what was going on behind the so-called placid screen of the 1950s.
The story might have been fleshed out a bit more, but, still, it’s a nice enough little take on a nostalgically comfortable era.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-57962-032-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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
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