A meandering tale made enjoyable by the author’s rich renderings of characters and their quirks.
In this novel about an emotionally stunted widow, Parrish (Women Within, 2017, etc.) offers a quiet, fractured study of mourning.
When Lavinia Starkhurst hears that her wealthy husband, Chip, has died in a freak accident, she initially thinks it’s a joke: “I’m just standing here waiting for the punch line,” she tells her husband’s best friend, the bearer of bad news. It’s a fitting start to this inscrutable novel, which examines the emotional confusion of losing a loved one. Lavinia, in denial about her grief, becomes prone to tears, off-putting jokes, and having one drink too many on an empty stomach. Parrish is an exacting writer who drops keen observations (“She felt haunted, not by Chip's ghost, but by her own cruelty”) that make Lavinia’s sudden bouts of weeping especially startling. Chip was Lavinia’s second husband, and his death leaves her struggling with feelings for her alcoholic ex, Potter. On a whim, she decides to take a cross-country trip from her home in upstate New York to California, much to the concern of her friends and family. Parrish writes about roadside motels and dime-a-dozen diners with a warmth that contrasts sharply with Lavinia’s sterile home life. Readers will almost feel the wind in the protagonist’s hair as she sets off for adventure. On the road, she meets a somewhat expected array of characters down on their luck, and she’s quick to come to their monetary aid. The most effective moments come when she’s vulnerable with strangers, as when she spends time in Montana reconnecting with Potter’s sister, Patty. At one point, Lavinia endures a last-minute invitation to a funeral, where she’s confused for someone else, revealing just how precarious her identity is. Lavinia’s trip is marked by impulsive decisions and dropped plotlines, making the whole affair feel like a woozy fever dream. However, readers are rewarded with further study of Lavinia and her past lives, drawing the emotionally distant widow into sharper focus.
A meandering tale made enjoyable by the author’s rich renderings of characters and their quirks.Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947021-09-9
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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