A rich, pretty teenager flees the bourgeois terrors of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, heading straight for the demimonde of E-Z living, star-studded L.A., where she gives birth to the hottest child star since the current ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Wilkins (Elements of Chance, 1989) was West Coast bureau chief for E-Z reading, star- studded People magazine. Caught in flagrante with her cute but baseborn boyfriend by her icy banker father, 16-year-old Beth Carol Barnes lifts four hundred dollars from the family cashbox and takes the midnight bus out of town, hoping to find warmth and tolerance in southern California. She is joined in midflight by tacky, resourceful Fern Darling, also in her teens, also headed for L.A. The two girls will be linked for the rest of their silly lives even though they separate on arrival. Fern takes the low road to a career as a gossip czaress; Beth Carol takes the low road to social prominence and newsworthy motherhood. Beth Carol's undoer is preppy drug- dealer and Yale graduate Paul Fournier, who would have everybody believe he owns the mansion he inhabits even though he is the child of a lowly secretary. Nine sordid months after her arrival, Beth Carol gives birth to Raleigh Barnes, who may or may not be Paul's child but who is certainly the most photogenic, cooperative, sensible, and box-office-bankable baby you could ask for. But there is a mystery about little Raleigh that leads to the pubescent child's disappearance at the hands of supposedly trustworthy supposed father Paul. Washing up on the shore of Mexico, young Raleigh acquires wisdom at an intellectual colony, picks up a degree at the University of Chicago, acquires a fortune, becomes gorgeous, and returns to L.A. bent on revenge. Perfect reading for the waiting room or the grocery line. Robin Leach should do the cassette version if Mary Hart can't.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-017957-0
Page Count: 468
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1992
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
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