Unlikely but successful combination of light humor and introspection.
Country music elegy to a long-lost woman, lesbian-style.
The nameless first-person narrator is in a state of mourning for her first love, Madeline, who died at age 14. So comfortable is the narrator with her self-imposed exile from romance, and so accustomed is she to silently narrating her life to Madeline’s ghost, that she does not notice that after close to 20 years her mourning has suddenly become darker and more despairing. The narrator reads signs of Madeline’s presence everywhere, and because she is a projectionist at a movie house, she experiences almost everything as though it were a scene in a movie, or as though it had a soundtrack. What the narrator cannot see is that her grief—as well as her habitual references to popular culture to explain how she feels—is slowly separating her from real experience. Two women, her housemate Billie, an exasperatingly talkative and self-deluded poet, and Julia, a serene and self-possessed artist, refuse to desert the narrator. In fact, as she becomes more emotionally remote, they dedicate themselves to helping her make meaningful human connections. Eventually, even the narrator’s annoyance with Billie, whose extroverted emotional life make the two women mirror opposites, grows into something like grudging affection. And with Julia, she is again able to feel romantic love. But when Billie and Julia, despite their tolerance, leave the narrator, it opens the way for an understanding that losing loved ones is an occasion for growth. All ends well, if unconvincingly. Though the plot is relatively dark, it is enlivened by Brooks’s colorful depiction of the secondary characters; drawn in bold strokes, they gain dimension as the narrator realizes their importance to her. Also noteworthy are the dozens of references to films and music (Brooks provides a list of songs meant to be used as a soundtrack for the novel); they are neatly incorporated, resonant without being distracting.
Unlikely but successful combination of light humor and introspection.Pub Date: May 10, 2006
ISBN: 1-55192-717-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Raincoast
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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
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