Christie and James Wheeler, tobacco farmers in turn-of-the- century Hopewell, Kentucky, and already parents of three, become the most illustrious people of their time and place when Christie gives birth to quintuplets. Her pregnancy was marked by a misdiagnosis of fibroids—and after the birth Christie wonders whether her so liking sex with her husband (as well as being once erotically charged by a preacher's millennial verve) could have contributed to so freakish an issue. But whatever their cause, the five babies demand heroic attention: Christie's milk is nowhere near adequate; a black nursemaid is called in. Also arriving are the curious—from as far away as St. Louis and Chicago. But in a matter of months the babies all die—``wooled to death,'' Christie thinks, from being overhandled by strangers; killed by Negro milk, James prefers to think. In any case, life after the babies grows hard economically as well as sentimentally; when a crop goes bad, Christie and James allow themselves to be suckered into going on a lecture tour (with the five tiny embalmed bodies in a glass case) that degenerates into a carny sideshow and worse. Shaking off their nightmare, the Wheelers finally allow a scientific institute to keep the babies' bodies for research; and the book ends with Christie in old age paying a visit to the Dionne quints. Mason (Love Life, etc.) has a wonderful story here and knows it, but has chosen to tell it so slowly, at such deliberate pace, that only the babies' deaths (and Christie's frantic impotence to stop the dying)—plus some of the freak-show hucksterism on the post-death tour—come over as vivid enough to be indelible. Mason's usually fine dialogue is muffled by historical distance, and the book simply is too long to maintain Christie's painful awe at life's oddness. The theme of exploitation rises foremost, but it's a late one the novel accedes to almost halfheartedly—sociology more cut and dried than the fearful psychology of Christie's grief. (First printing of 60,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-016780-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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