Chilling fiction that serves to illuminate even darker facts—Pat Barker fans, take special note.
A stretch of Australian land and the ancient manse that sits upon it prove troublesome for generations of a haunted family.
The earth itself is a central character in this gothic novel from rising Aussie star McGahan (1988, 1997, etc.). In the lush Darling Downs part of Queensland, 500 square miles of prime farm and ranchland was once owned by the magisterial White family, which frittered it away in a series of unfortunate accidents and bad decisions recounted in periodic flashback chapters. All that remains of the grand White legacy is Kuran House, a massive, falling-down folly of a grand edifice now inhabited by one witchlike housekeeper and her charge, a doddering old man named John McIvor. His tangled and bitter relationship with the Whites emerges over several hundred precisely paced pages. New to Kuran House are McIvor’s unnamed sister, whose husband has just died in a fire, and her son, William. William serves as the entry point to a bloody and haunted backstory, as he wanders the house’s decrepit corridors, explores the ghostly lands and gets swept up in McIvor’s quixotic dream to beat a piece of legislation that could give all the land back to the Aborigines. Buried secrets wait to be discovered, and many past sins still need to be atoned for. Sickly, delusional William begins to see things and people that may or may not be there. McGahan knows how to lay out a spooky story with palpable characters and dramatic shifts of tone. He also makes good use of his substantive research in a fictional work that serves as a primer on how Aborigines were cleared from the land like so many pests.
Chilling fiction that serves to illuminate even darker facts—Pat Barker fans, take special note.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-56947-417-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
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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