A grab bag of stories, winner of the 1993 Willa Cather Fiction Prize. Plunge in your hand and you could emerge with a real gem—or a plastic ring. All of Pierce's tales feature women or girls living by their own rules. Men exist to advance plots, provide obstacles, and color the landscape, but they are generally not very active unless they are making mistakes. Fortunately, the women are consistently lively and smart, although the stories they inhabit are not always their equals. Some have an experimental air about them. ``J*e*w*e*l,'' for example—in which the eponymous 11-year-old narrator (a chambermaid at her mother's motel) addresses readers monologue- style—reads like character prep-work for a story. Other tales convey well the elevating mysteries of their characters' otherwise mundane lives. A device Pierce uses repeatedly (as in ``Remarkable,'' ``Star Box,'' and ``The Twins'') is to have one character dead at the onset, offering an opportunity for relatives and friends to speculate on the deceased and recover from tragedy with dignity; melodrama is scrupulously avoided. ``Remarkable'' and ``Sans Homme'' (her best story) star two of Pierce's most captivating characters: Lydie and Lily, women with ``neglected elegance'' and enviable malleability. Lydie, said to have gone mad after the death of her son, seems like a one-dimensional nut to her daughter, but shows another side upon meeting her young grandson. Lily, who appears to have stepped out of a Dorothy Parker tale, is a gossiped-about socialite who is never sans homme but always places her young daughter (her closest companion and strongest champion) before the men. ``Sans Homme'' and to a lesser extent ``The Empire Beauty Salon'' (about a Manhattan hairdresser relocated to Maine) read like whispered confidences; they are truly memorable. Enough of the sublime to make it worth wading through the so- so.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-9627460-9-6
Page Count: 182
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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