Though she fumbles slightly at the close, Shreve (Resistance, 1995, etc.) deftly juxtaposes a strained modern marriage and a century-old double murder. Jean is assigned to take photographs for a magazine piece about an ancient crime on the granite island of Smuttynose, off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She makes the journey to the island by sailboat, sharing the claustrophobic quarters with her five-year-old daughter Billie, her high-strung poet husband Thomas, his brother Rich, and Rich's girlfriend of a few months, Adaline. In 1873, two women were hacked to death on the island, and a third, apparently a survivor of the attack, was found hiding in a remote cave; a Prussian itinerant was convicted of the killings. In an uncatalogued archive in Portsmouth, Jean finds a pencil-written translation of the diary kept by Maren, the woman who survived, and, in a fit of pique caused by seeing her husband engrossed in conversation with attractive Adaline, she pockets it. And thus two dramas unspool side by side: On board, Jean focuses on the easy interaction between her husband and Rich's girlfriend and muses on the estrangement in her marriage. Maren's diary, meanwhile, describes her childhood in Norway and her incestuous love for her brother Evan. Married off to a taciturn fisherman, Maren settles on desolate Smuttynose, soon to be joined by her bad-tempered sister Karen and, later, by Evan and his new wife Anethe. Tortured by jealousy, Maren dutifully maintains her remote household, until, the diary tells us, her long-repressed rage is unleashed. It was, it turns out, Maren who killed Karen and Anethe. In present time, Jean ventures some betrayals of her own, and the small sailboat gets caught in a ferocious storm. The ensuing death at sea, however, feels unnecessary—a sort of cheap shot ending. The emotional losses depicted in the parallel stories are ultimately more haunting. Nonetheless, a highly readable yarn and a complex, convincing exploration of the ramifications of jealousy. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-316-78997-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
