This middle aged businessman's review of his involvements in the lives of others is in the British comic spirit. J. W. Denham, whose job keeps him in the East, particularly Japan, rebels at the "putridity of damnation" he finds on his return to the suburb of the smug Midland city that is his home. During his leave he denounces the weekend adultery he sees blooming at the pub and discovers his tirades have inspired young Winterbottom to leave his experimental wife, Alice, and take Imogene, daughter of the local poet, to live with him in London. The introduction of Mr. Raj, from Ceylon, to the community produces a color clash, for Raj's study is to be on the "Popular Conceptions of Racial Differences" and his good intentions in having his questionnaires filled create widening areas of trouble. His talents with curry, however, result in his living with Denham's father when Denham returns to his job, and his acceptance by white people becomes easier. Denham plays hookey when he learns his father is dying and, home again — his father dead, he is confronted with two more deaths, for Raj kills Alice's returned husband, then kills himself. Denham's mirror, at the end, reveals that he has done little to help and that the instability at which he has railed is better than the shadow life he lives aboard. With a feeling for the ludicrous, for high lighted characters and cumulatively heightened situations, this plays the "angry" theme with adult modulations.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1960
ISBN: 0393008878
Page Count: 255
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1960
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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