Competent. Bland. If only real life were so nice.
Corman returns to the subject of his bestselling Kramer vs. Kramer (1977) in a feel-good story about the long-term results of divorce.
Rob and Karen Burrows divorced four years ago, when their son Tommy was 13. No ugly causes like adultery were involved, just the pressures of two careers colliding. Rob, who manufactures playground equipment, has remarried well: Vickie is a warmhearted, divorced mother of two. Karen, who runs a crafts-store/gallery in Manhattan’s Soho, is involved in a comfortable, undemanding relationship with Bill, a widower. As Tommy approaches high school graduation, he’s a well-adjusted, likable kid whose wit comes out in the cartoons he writes for the school paper. High-achievers that they are, Rob and Karen grudgingly accept that Tommy’s grades and SAT scores limit his college choices. He ends up at a decent small college in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, but after an unpleasant first semester experience, he breaks the news to his parents that academia is not for him. As Tommy establishes an independent blue-collar life for himself in Pittsfield, Rob realizes that he’s in danger of sinking his second marriage if he doesn’t spend more time with Vickie and her kids. Stung by Bill’s lack of interest in Tommy’s problems, Karen breaks up with him (but not to worry: another, even nicer, widower is waiting in the wings). Meanwhile, Tommy falls into a dream job with a major American artist who recognizes the boy’s artistic gifts and engineers his enrollment at Rhode Island School of Design. As Rob and Karen share their ongoing concern for their son, their friends can’t understand why they divorced. Readers may not, either. The two seldom argue, display no discomforting sexual yearnings, exhibit mild nostalgia. The tart realism of the early scenes, where the two do struggle with private disappointments and ambivalence, quickly dissipates into a sweet pudding of happy endings.
Competent. Bland. If only real life were so nice.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32983-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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