The immensely prolific Fr. Greeley brings back the crazy O’Malley family (A Midwinter’s Tale, 1998) for a post-WW II romance about the perils of coming of age. Chucky O’Malley, who joined the army in 1946 for the GI Bill’s college benefits and became a sergeant in Germany, returns to Chicago in 1948 as a decorated veteran and enrolls at Notre Dame. Despite overseas encounters with beautiful FrÑuleins, he still has fond feelings for his childhood girlfriend, Rosemarie Clancy. She’s a kind of foster sister, though the recent photo he took of her in a two-piece bathing suit gets him in trouble at Notre Dame, as does reading Joyce’s Ulysses, which is on the Index. Will Chucky become a photographer? Father Raven has asked him to save Rosemarie. Her father is a mountainous, diabolical psychopath, a gambler and investor, a member of The Outfit; her mother’s a drunk, and Rosemarie, three years younger than Chucky, denies her own drinking problem. When a dozen bottles of beer are found under his bed at Notre Dame, Chucky is expelled and falls into steep hatred for the university and especially for his nemesis there, the intolerably intolerant Father Pius (“ ‘The university will be free from your evil soul!” Father Pius exulted”). Chucky goes on to get a job as an accountant and becomes deeply involved with the beautiful Cordelia, who eventually dumps him. Then, in Rome, he has some steamy affairs before returning home and enrolling alongside Rosemarie at the University of Chicago. Will he, can he, save her? It’s a question the author has the good sense not to answer. Greeley clearly likes to jump into a plot and row steadily, just to see what’s up for a whole batch of characters who will, of course, at last find themselves aswim in family warmth and Christmas carols, unwrapping middlebrow presents like Younger Than Springtime.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-86572-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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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