Who said anything about Danielle Steel? Father Greeley (Irish Lace, 1996, etc.) seems to have discovered Proust, if this elliptical—and endless—reminiscence of ancient pleasures and regrets is to be taken as a sign. Patrick Keenan, recently made a monsignor, grew up among the ``country club'' Irish of suburban Chicago and entered a seminary in the 1940s. There, his best friend was Leo Kelly, quieter and less self-assured than Patrick, and a sharer of Patrick's infatuation with Jane Devlin, a fiery redhead from the wrong side of the tracks. The Devlins had made a shady fortune and couldn't quite fit in with the ``Old Houses'' set at the lake resort where the Keenans hung out, but Jane's stunning good looks and—this being Greeley, after all—magnificent jugs help persuade even the most ardent snobs to overlook her shanty origins. Leo is still smitten with Jane when he drops out of the seminary, but whatever hopes he holds out vanish when two friends are killed in an automobile accident and Leo is falsely accused of driving the car. Although everything blows over, Leo feels the need to get away, so he joins the Marines and is sent to Korea, where he's captured and mistakenly reported killed in action. Jane, heartbroken, marries a drunken lout; Leo, depressed, survives prison, starts a new life as a political scientist, and marries a neurotic graduate student. Thirty unhappy years later, Leo, appointed provost of the University of Chicago, returns to the lake to sort out his life. Monsignor Keenan is able to prod him along the way, of course, to the happy ending we'd had all figured out by page eight. Too long and rambling to be a page-turner, although it has the usual Greeley graces (simple characters, even simpler ideas) in a plot that's not nearly as complex as it wants to be. For true believers only. (Literary Guild and Mystery Guild selections)
Pub Date: June 16, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86082-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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
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