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RUBY

A widow and a teenager form a friendship that helps both move ahead with their lives. Livia meets David when he walks into her East Village hat shop as she’s dancing alone to the strains of “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Four months later, the newlyweds marry at City Hall, accompanied by Olivia’s cat Arthur dressed in a custom-made top hat. They settle into cozy domesticity, buying a beach house in Rhode Island, painting each other’s toenails, reveling in their shared love for Stickley chairs, Leonard Cohen songs, and Disneyland (“but not Disney World”). The extreme preciosity of this version of marital bliss makes it hard to share Olivia’s devastation when, a scant year later, David is hit by a car while jogging—especially since Hood’s depiction of mourning is as schematic as her characterizations. The story picks up, however, when Olivia discovers 15-year-old Ruby sitting in the kitchen of the beach house. Pregnant and unmarried, Ruby has been thrown out by her working-class mother; her college-student boyfriend seems unlikely to provide much support, either. Olivia decides that adopting Ruby’s baby will give her a reason to go on living, and Ruby agrees to the plan, though it’s clear that this believably flaky teenager can’t be relied on to stick to any decision. Hood makes nice use of physical detail to show Olivia slowly regaining her appetite for life—due less to impending motherhood than to her growing fondness for Ruby, who also gains a new sense of the possibilities open to her from observing Olivia’s more privileged existence. The story’s unexpectedly touching denouement commendably resists the temptation to provide easy, feel-good resolutions. Not the most profound exploration of grief and loss, but once past the cutesy set-up, veteran Hood (Places to Stay the Night, 1993, etc.) provides a solid tale and several genuinely affecting moments.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1998

ISBN: 0-312-19553-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Picador

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

Categories:
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LOVE AND OTHER WORDS

With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.

Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.

Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.

With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.

Pub Date: April 10, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018

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