A dual debut for filmmaker Campion and her sister Anna, who offer an account of a very twisted love/hate affair that transpires between a kidnaped cult member and her deprogrammer. “Exit counselors,” something of a cross between psychotherapists and secret agents, specialize in forcibly removing people from cults and reorienting them to the real world. P.J. Waters is one of the best of the breed. A New Yorker, P.J. is called halfway across the globe to Australia to assist in the case of Ruth Baron, a bright girl from New South Wales who decided to take a year off from her university studies to travel through India with some friends and ended up joining a cult headed by the charlatan guru Chidaatma Baba. Baba’s brand of asceticism has a Hindu scent but is basically his own concoction, revolving in large part on unthinking subservience to him. By the time Ruth’s family finds out where she’s ended up, she’s set to be “initiated” in two weeks. With no time to be lost, Ruth’s mother and brother manage to kidnap her and bring her home to Australia, but it’s up to P.J. to convince her not to return—or to kill herself. This he accomplishes through intensive interrogations conducted in a safe house over a period of days leading to weeks. As usual, P.J. succeeds, but this time something out of the ordinary happens: he and Ruth develop an erotic obsession with each other. P.J. is a married man, Ruth is barely in her 20’s. An affair would only harm her and destroy him—or would it? Two people who have dedicated most of their lives to a search for meaning are not likely to be constrained by conventions, but they cannot be exempt from them either. Can they help each other out? The premise and plot are very old-hat, but the Campion sisters” narration is fresh and deft enough to breathe life into them: Worth a look.
Pub Date: May 26, 1999
ISBN: 0-7868-6349-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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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