What begins as a sharp, clever debut comedy veers bewilderingly (and disappointingly) toward the surreal. Howie's 30-year-old (unnamed) heroine has been married for six months, but already it's clear the marriage isn't succeeding. She and her husband, Doug, have stopped having sex and can work through the tension between themselves only by buying antique furniture and refinishing it. By now their Brooklyn apartment is crammed full of antiques, Doug is growing ever more taciturn, and his wife is having frequent nightmares. Her father commiserates but isn't much help. Neither are her friends. Then a ruptured muscle in the woman's thigh begins to cause serious pain, and her doctor can offer no solution. Abruptly, she gets divorced and drives north to a cabin in the woods, determined to remain alone until she's figured out why she seems constitutionally unable to love. In the cabin, though, insight fails to appear. She watches the snow fall, growing increasingly depressed until she notices that her cat, Vinny, is talking to her. Vinny, an introspective, intellectual soul who was once Napoleon and claims to be evolving upwards, through multiple incarnations, toward an ever-simpler life form, tries to help his mistress analyze her troubles—even as the snow continues falling, the pain in the leg increases, and it becomes clear that this woman will have to venture into the wilderness in search of more firewood. Her wilderness adventure yields an encounter with a polar bear personifying the woman's rage: Only by ripping the muscle out of her leg (and letting go of past resentments) can she tame the bear. Back at the cabin, a beautiful visitor named Nellie reminds the woman of someone she knows— someone who, it turns out, is the narrator herself, as others see her. All our heroine has to do, it seems, is learn to love all the selves Nellie has revealed to her, and love for other people will become possible at last. A highly unusual—and irritatingly strange—debut.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-100237-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
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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