by Ardythe Ashley ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1991
Ashley's fiction debut is composed of two cleverly interconnecting, manneristically twisted novellas about three pieces of Venetian flotsam—a beautiful, lonely writer named Mira; her dying, Thomas Mann-ish lover, Aidan; and his confused son, James. In ``The Name of the Father,'' young James appears on Mira's doorstep, as if washed up by the tide, to meet his late father's last paramour and, through her, to come to know Aidan—who abandoned his son many years ago to his movie-star wife. James uses Mira's roman Ö clef about her relationship with Aidan (called ``The Name of the Son'') to guide him in his quest, dogging Mira as she roams about Venice, making love to her on his father's grave, and helping her dry out the pages of her latest manuscript after it falls into the canal. Eventually, though, they part, with some suggestion that once the two of them sort out their tangled emotions, they'll reconnoiter. Then Ashley launches into The Name of the Son itself, which describes how Aidan and Mira got together. And all the Venetian settings from the first novella are revisited, this time with another set of high-strung lovers—Mira and the elderly Aidan—though the end of the tale has already been writ in the stones of Venice, since Aidan dies, leaving Mira ready to receive his son seven years hence. The prose is as overwrought as the characters (``...she had fallen in love with him. And fallen. And fallen. Until he himself had been felled''), and one senses that beneath all the sound and fury, there isn't much. At best, then: a kind of aesthetic back- rub for those with a taste for high-design fiction.
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-345-37045-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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