Cheap mysticism narrated in wooden prose (“He felt connected to all of humankind and all of nature in a way he never had...
A history of the world in eight chapters, from 3,000,000 b.c. to the present, as Wood (Sacred Ground, 2001, etc.) follows the trail of a magical blue stone that fell to earth from a meteor.
The author sounds like someone who has read a lot about the Knights of the Round Table and decided to go one better than the Holy Grail—which, after all, only went back to the time of Christ. She begins her tale some 3,000 millennia ago, when a meteor crashed in Africa and left a small blue gem in the residue of its ashes. From Africa, the gem passed to the Near East, where it broke the curse that kept the women of the Laliari tribe from conceiving. When it later came into the possession of the Chanaanites, its powers of fertility caused the patriarch Avram to make the connection between the cycles of the moon and female ovulation. In Imperial Rome, the gem fell into the hands of a wealthy Christian lady who suffered martyrdom, and it then became part of her relics and was venerated for centuries. It helped save an English convent from destruction during the Viking invasions of the 11th century, and in the 16th century it protected a German pilgrim who lost her way and ended up in Tibet rather than Jerusalem. It made its first appearance in the New World—in Martinique—during the 18th century and showed up in California in the middle of the 1840s’ Gold Rush. Afterward, it fell into obscurity and was lost until a New Age scholar discovered it in a junk shop some twenty years ago. It’s for sale today, in case you’re interested.
Cheap mysticism narrated in wooden prose (“He felt connected to all of humankind and all of nature in a way he never had before”).Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-27534-X
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
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
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