BAD TIMING

Name: BAD TIMING
Author: Betsy Berne
ISBN: 0-679-46318-6

by Betsy Berne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 2001

The tale is anchored in a real enough problem, even if it’s a familiar one to every romance fan: What to do with a man who...

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Another bright young New Yorker looks for love in all the wrong places.

Newcomer Berne has made her narrator heroine in her own image. Like Berne, she’s a Manhattan artist who regularly works as a freelance writer for all the best magazines. But all her life she’s been cursed by bad timing, arriving everywhere far too early for comfort (she’s always the only person at the first hour of Deejay Night each week). Now, for a change, her lateness is a problem: She’s convinced she’s pregnant after a one-night stand with black jazz club owner Joseph Pendleton, and she’s absolutely right. Even though he’s gotten their relationship off to a fast, trusting start by accidentally leaving his credit card behind in her apartment, Joseph, with one wife in the wings and another in the history books, and children on both sides of the Atlantic—one very much a part of his life—isn’t exactly prime husband material; he’s not even a very promising abortion-clinic escort. But in his maddening alternation between busy petulance and growling affection—at least on the rare occasions when the nameless heroine manages to keep him on the phone for more than five minutes at a stretch—he’s ten times more vital than any of the sitcom types who compete for attention in her world. These background figures barely register, not because they depart from their types (overbearing mother, ubiquitous gay escort, vacuously chatty girlfriend), but just because they’re smudged.

The tale is anchored in a real enough problem, even if it’s a familiar one to every romance fan: What to do with a man who won’t commit? Sadly, there’s nothing outside the orbit of the frustrated heroine’s attachment to her unsuitable male, not even the wit you’d expect of the artsy cast, to give this problem greater depth or resonance.

Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2001

ISBN: 0-679-46318-6

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.