Beattie follows up the successful Another You (1995) with a tale of domestic grief on a low boil. Dara Falcon is the sort of woman who can easily stick in your craw. As predatory and majestic as her namesake, she manages to swoop down on poor Jean Warner and sink her talons in: "Dara Falcon was once Darcy Fisher. She either had or hadn't been a promising young actress. She either did or did not have a baby when she was sixteen." Nothing is very clear about Dara's past, and—as Jean figures out after she's known her for a while—her present life is hardly less deceptive In the small New Hampshire town where Jean lives with her husband Bob, however, Dara's sudden and unexplained appearance brings a measure of glamour that most of the locals are too dazzled to question. Passionate, charming, seductive, Dara makes a play for most of the men in town but settles for a while on Tom Van Sant, an old schoolmate of Bob's. This puts Jean in an awkward position when the two part ways, since she has to assume the most thankless of diplomatic roles as intermediary to a broken couple. When an elaborate conflict over the return of Tom's ring blows up in Jean's face and Data accuses her of disloyalty, Jean slowly begins to wonder what manner of girl she's dealing with. "It would be difficult to explain why Data and I went on to have a friendship," she concludes. "It was a friendship . . . in which I listened in desultory fashion and trusted absolutely nothing she said." Finally, a resolution is offered when a tragedy confirms Jean's suspicions about Dara's motives and priorities, and allows her to find a way out of the emotional maze of Dara's many damaging fantasies. Crisp prose with little behind it: Beattie's narrative skill nearly makes up for the paltry tale itself—but not quite.
Pub Date: May 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45502-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
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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