A friendly summer read that manages to rise above the lighter-than-air comic fluff that terminally inflates many another...
Yet another London career girl looks for fulfillment, though newcomer Maxted’s narrator has enough endearing charm to make her stand out from the rest of the Bridget Jones clones.
When she begins her story, 26-year-old Helen Bradshaw is relatively happy as an assistant at a woman’s magazine, flatmate to sweet Luke and sexy Marcus, and center of a close-knit circle of girlfriends. But when her father suddenly dies of a heart attack, Helen spends the rest of the year (and the novel) “getting over it”—a flippant suggestion offered far more easily than achieved. At first Helen seems a pillar of strength, comforting her increasingly withdrawn and suicidal mother and moving on with her own life in quick time. The personal blunders Helen continually makes, however, suggest unresolved grief and conflicted feelings about a father who was distant in the best of times. It’s a lot to handle, especially for a girl who’s engaged in a colossal fight with Marcus (with whom she regrettably slept in a moment of weakness), the romantic pursuit of Tom (who always catches Helen at her very worst moments), and a struggle over what to do about her friend Tina, whose perfect boyfriend is beating up on her. It’s a wonder Helen makes it to work in the morning—though once there she assiduously avoids working. All this drama is conveyed in the lightest manner, with an overload of hip references (Fox Mulder and Quentin Tarantino turn up on the same page), and seesaws between annoying and entertaining. Finally, though, Helen’s plight succeeds in winning the reader’s sympathy, the slight and the heartfelt strike a companionable balance, and by the end all hopes are for our heroine’s happiness.
A friendly summer read that manages to rise above the lighter-than-air comic fluff that terminally inflates many another Bridget Jones wannabe—by now a genre all its own.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-039320-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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
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
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