Literary roadkill.
Momma heads to Hollywood to track down her errant daughter.
A few years ago, Violet Kincaid vanished from Devine, Texas, population 894, leaving behind a befuddled husband and two helpless babies. Violet’s mom, Ruby, is left to pick up after her daughter’s mess. Ruby takes in Violet’s children, Bubbie and Bunny, and does her best to instill some normalcy into the kid’s lives, but these two urchins are a handful. As the sole proprietress of Devine Bowl, Ruby wasn’t planning to raise children again. As it is, she can barely find time to follow her beloved soap opera. A commercial during the aforementioned soap floors Ruby and her bowling pals—Violet has become a television model. The local hens decide to round up a posse and head to Hollywood in order to reunite Violet with her family. Since Imogene, Violet’s irritating mother-in-law, is the only one in town with a Winnebago and enough money to fund the trip, she serves as the organizer. Ruby’s sister, the oversexed Loralva, is recruited as the driver. This is Loralva’s shot to get on the famous television game show, The Price is Right. Ruby decides to bring the kids along, which turns the Winnebago into a virtual torture chamber. That’s where the MoonPies come in handy; the only way to get Bunny and Bubbie to behave is by bribing them with the sweet and sticky treat. (It’s a bad sign when an item of packaged food is assigned a leading role in a novel.) Once in Hollywood, Ruby keeps coming up against dead ends. She nearly gives up before a trail of MoonPies leads her to Violet. Wallen writes knowingly about big hair and small minds, but she can’t conjure up the magic necessary to bring the road trip to life. The reader wants no part of climbing aboard this particular Winnebago and suffering through Imogene’s endless griping, Bunny’s snot-nosed whining or Bubbie’s gory hijinks. It’s all too clear why Violet left Devine and never looked back.
Literary roadkill.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2007
ISBN: 0-670-03817-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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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