A well-told coming-of-ager: hardly groundbreaking, but sweet enough to jerk a few tears by end.
Tender story of a girl growing up motherless in small-town Virginia, by the author of, most recently, Entering Normal (2001), etc.
Tallie begins her story by remembering the night her mother finally returned after a six-month jaunt in Hollywood searching for stardom. Dinah Mae, even in her late 30s, was the town beauty, probably the prettiest woman in the whole county. A virtual twin of Natalie Wood, Dinah Mae knew everything there was to know about the dead actress, and she fed Tallie stories of glamour and determination. But when she came back from Hollywood, Tallie’s mama just didn’t seem the same, and it wasn’t just her failure to have landed a movie role. It’s soon obvious that Mama has cancer, though for a 12-year-old, a dying mother seems an impossible thing. By the time Tallie is 16 (when the story takes place), her sweet father is drowning his sorrow in drink, she’s working the summer at the Klip-N-Kurl, where she diligently writes down all the female wisdom she’s privy to and plans on going to Hollywood to fulfill her mother’s dream. When Glamour Day comes to the salon (a company of “trained professionals” offer makeovers and glamour pics), Tallie sees it as her escape: all she needs is that eight-by-ten glossy to land herself a movie deal. The story follows Tallie’s memories of the past—good times with Mama, then the heartache of watching her die—with her current life in Eden, including the various oddballs at the salon, the witch woman who lives in the woods, and the growing attraction Tallie has for Spy Reynolds, the town’s rich boy who has a troubled past of his own. Along the way, Tallie discovers that her mama had quite a few secrets, and only a trip to Hollywood (and finding who lives at a certain address) will answer the questions Tallie now has.
A well-told coming-of-ager: hardly groundbreaking, but sweet enough to jerk a few tears by end.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-44574-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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
SEEN & HEARD
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