The plot is practically nonexistent (the title says it all, almost literally), but Marchetta’s first solo effort—the story of Frankie Ferraro and the three most significant women in his life—is strangely gripping and unexpectedly satisfying for pulpy romance, perhaps thanks to the author’s tight, fast-moving style. Francis Ferraro is born in 1939 on Long Island to traditional Italian parents—Dolly and Sal—who have “made it big” with their contract sewing factory, which Sal hopes to pass on someday to his only son. But Frankie has other plans for himself—his friendship with Dan Colvington, a wealthy, mannered preppie, has given him a glimpse of a way of life he perceives as far superior to his immigrant parents’ plastic-covered-furniture notions of taste. And it’s through Dan that Frankie meets the kind of people he’s been dreaming about—’society people——and even falls in love with a distant relative of Dan’s, a pot-smoking, spoiled, trust-funded blond named Miranda. Frankie doesn’t know about Miranda’s troubled family life, and although she agrees to elope with him and they spend many luminous months in a Greenwich Village hovel (which Miranda finds charmingly rustic), disaster strikes when Frankie learns the truth of Miranda’s past. Years pass, and Frankie marries Annabel, an aristocratic, alluring woman who mothers his first child, Maud. When Annabel flips and kidnaps Maud, Frankie wages war to find the daughter he’s been neglecting for years; although Maud is regained, Annabel is out of the picture for good. After striking out twice, Frankie has given up hope, but his faithful, long-suffering assistant Martha shows him that true love more often than not finds you, rather than the other way around. Marchetta, co-writer of Ivana Trump’s two novels (Free to Love, 1993, etc.), is far better on her own: Frankie and his strong-willed women defy stereotyping in ways that are unusual for the genre, and the overall message seems genuinely heartfelt.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18226-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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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