CLARA MONDSCHEIN’S MELANCHOLIA

Name: CLARA MONDSCHEIN’S MELANCHOLIA
Author: Anne Raeff
ISBN: 1-931561-16-8

by Anne Raeff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 2002

A family portrait of considerable eloquence and intelligence, rendered somewhat uneven by Ruth’s portion being the most...

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A tragic past and a difficult present converge quietly and compassionately in Raeff’s debut, a tale of three generations of women in a family still coming to terms with the Holocaust.

In 1996, the oldest generation, in the figure of 86-year-old Ruth, is still unbowed. After the death of her physician husband Karl the year before, Ruth, a former nurse, has begun volunteering daily at an AIDS hospice in Greenwich Village as a way to keep herself active. The youngest generation, represented by teenaged granddaughter Deborah, is still facing the questions of youth: how to deal with friends, family, and the future. But she is a talented cellist, and playing her music gives her a refuge from the current family crisis. For it is the middle generation, Deborah’s mother and Ruth’s daughter, the depressed and bedridden Clara, who seems most oppressed by the family’s past. Ruth finds an outlet for her frustration with Clara by telling her life story to Tommy, an embittered hospice patient dying without having told his family. She speaks of her own childhood in Vienna, of her father’s terminal melancholia, of her father’s doctor becoming her husband (even though he was gay), of their flight from the Nazis and eventual capture late in the war, and of life in the concentration camp, which culminated in the birth of Clara days before they were liberated. Tommy doesn’t live to hear the whole story. Deborah, meanwhile, somewhat uncertain about her own sexuality, runs away from the stench of Clara’s sickness, which pervades their house in New Jersey, and finds herself knocking on Ruth’s door in the city. When no one answers, she goes in through the window to wait, and when Ruth comes home from her last vigil with Tommy, they go together to see what can be done about poor Clara.

A family portrait of considerable eloquence and intelligence, rendered somewhat uneven by Ruth’s portion being the most compelling by far.

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2002

ISBN: 1-931561-16-8

Page Count: 258

Publisher: MacAdam/Cage

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.