by Anna Monardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2006
Troubling, disarming and uncomfortably real.
An unconventional family digs through 15 years of secrets to help its troubled teen.
Natassia Stein is the love child of creative, passionate, young, unmarried parents without the foggiest idea how to raise her. Born in Rome to Mary (Korean war baby and professional dancer) and Ross (Jewish pre-med son of prominent New York book editors) while they’re on a college study-abroad trip, she is shuttled around carelessly for the first several years of her life and then sent to live with her doting, if neurotic, paternal grandparents. As her father establishes his medical practice in Spokane and her mother travels the world with various dance troupes, the now 15-year-old Natassia has her heart broken by a much older man and can’t seem to pick up the pieces when the affair ends. Also involved are Mary’s best friend, Nora, a nervous psychotherapist, and her husband, Christopher, a nurturing painter, who have known Natassia since she was an infant in Europe. As Mary tries to reestablish her relationship with her daughter and coax her back from the brink of disaster, the Steins beg for her return to the city, Ross gets perpetually wasted on the West Coast and Nora and Christopher struggle with their own role in Natassia’s unraveling: a secret that has the potential to destroy both their relationship with the Stein family and their own marriage. Finally, the parties convene under the watchful eye of Natassia’s therapist to explore the damages both small and great, that the family has done to a fragile child. Given that the big secret is revealed a tenth of the way in, this novel is too long by far, but there is something hauntingly honest about the cast of largely self-serving characters and the imperfect intersections of their love.
Troubling, disarming and uncomfortably real.Pub Date: June 20, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51466-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
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BOOK REVIEW
by Anna Monardo
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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