This harrowing wilderness adventure story, a first novel, features a refreshingly unlikely heroine: five-foot-one photographer Beryl, who must venture deep into the Canadian Arctic, fend off dozens of the world's largest land carnivores, and survive. The only daughter of elderly, over-protective Bostonians, Beryl lands the job of her dreams when Natural Photography magazine hires her to photograph the polar bears of Canada ``naturally''- -without a telescopic lens, separated from certain death only by the bars of a tiny iron cage set in the snow. Hired not for her talent or experience, but because she's the only applicant small enough to fit inside the cage, Beryl methodically prepares for her assignment by locking herself in the bedroom closet for hours each day. By the time she joins her fellow expedition members—David, a wise-cracking video cameraman who hates the cold; Butler, a macho nature writer; and Jean-Claude, their quiet young guide—Beryl believes she's quite ready to face the Far North's danger and sensory deprivation. In reality, she has no idea what's in store for her. In Churchill, where the bears gather every autumn to hunt on the frozen Hudson Bay, she barely survives her first hair- raising encounter with a bear while accompanying a policewoman on all-night patrol. The stakes increase as the team boards its state- of-the-art Arctic Traveler bus and ventures 40 miles into the wilderness, where Beryl climbs into her cage and takes pictures as hungry bears try to devour her. Facing her deepest fears, Beryl experiences spiritual as well as professional fulfillment, but her sessions are cut short when the ten-foot monsters chew the bus's fuel tanks to shreds, forcing its passengers to hike unprotected across the tundra in a desperate bid for warmth and shelter. Dramatically understated, yet offering several unforgettably vivid descriptions of wildlife encounters, this unusual novel offers high-caliber literary escapism.
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-56512-035-3
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
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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