In addition to several novels and celeb biographies (Garland, Hepburn, etc.), Edwards has given a touch-and-glow treatment to British royals like Queen Mary (1984) and Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret (1990). Now she takes on the case of thrice-married Wallis Warfield, the Duchess of Windsor, for whom the newly minted Edward VIII gave up his throne in 1936. In her dewy youth, impecunious Bessie Wallis Warfield announces to rich, cold Uncle Sol Warfield that ``I want to make everyone in Baltimore look up to me.'' Rejected, she feels, by the Warfields, with mother Alice and Aunt Bessie struggling in genteel poverty, Bessie Wallis—gifted with striking looks, a peppery tongue, and quick wits—plots her way upward. But Wallis's first husband, Win Spenser, a Navy officer and a brute, offers no upward path. There's an erotic episode with an Argentinean diplomat, and then there's a divorce, and social nets are skillfully cast in Europe, China (a strange interlude complete with a spy and death threats), and finally England. She marries the ``endearing'' if dull Ernest Simpson (security and respectability), moves a brilliantly successful inch into high society, gains a reputation as a dazzling hostess—and then lands the ``little man,'' the Prince of Wales, the focus of Wallis's efforts, as neatly as a minnow. But the Prince's mistress, with all the prestige this entails, and with the marvelous prospect of being the king's, will be horrified when Edward—as king—intends to abdicate and marry. There he'll be, an ex-king with no country or power, wholly dependent on her...''trapped.'' Even in a fictional treatment, Edwards does not really step outside familiar Wally-and-the-Duke popular outlines, but she offers plenty of diversion—in a cheerfully empathic portrait highlighted with a bit of wry amusement.
Pub Date: May 16, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-08835-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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