A treacly fiction debut from veteran journalist and Chicago Tribune columnist Greene (Hang Time, 1991, etc.): the story of three former high-school chums who decide to take a last summer off together after attending their 25th reunion. Ben, Michael, and Ronnie have each made their way in the world from small-town beginnings in Bristol, Ohio: Ben as a roving TV correspondent, familiar across America if not exactly famous; Michael as a devoted English teacher in the high school from which they graduated; Ronnie as a Cleveland multimillionaire after having married into money. When Ben pitches the idea of a summer sojourn, it doesn't take long for the others to leave their families to join him, and they spend their days driving and jetting hither and yon. Connections in Chicago get them into the Cubs clubhouse and the skybox at Wrigley Field; a chance conversation reunites them with Michael's first love, happily married in St. Louis but willing to meet them in Dallas for a weekend; Ronnie has a liaison with a dental hygienist whose jaw-drop beautiful body has men salivating wherever they go; Ben falls sweetly in love with a graduate student half his age. Meanwhile, the three reminiscence endlessly, but the experience is reaffirming as well: When Ronnie is abruptly tossed out as corporate chairman, he can recover, and even work on rebuilding his marriage. Ben also finds new purpose, turning his back on years invested as an all-American journalist to move back to Bristol and write a book, with his nascent romance showing promise. Rose-tinted, high-rolling male wish-fulfillment: the answer to every man's mid-life crisis, but terminally tedious as a novel.
Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42589-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
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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