A would-be comic tale from first-novelist Tomasco—about a cheating lesbian lover. After 20 years of relative happiness with her lover, oncology specialist Connie, the unnamed narrator—increasingly uneasy about her penchant for having affairs—decides to reform. She asks both her therapist and astrologer for help, but their counsel is too ambivalent to be useful. Yet living in a cave-like house built by a woman architect who had inscribed in the concrete floor of the carport her poignant plaint that she had never known ``real love,'' the narrator feels an additional obligation to make an effort to change, to know ``real love'' herself—an obligation that's reinforced when Connie, learning of her most recent infidelities, throws her out of the house. Moving in with her therapist's family, she decides to dress up as a man, get Connie to like her, and then, in a stunning denouement, reveal her true destiny. The therapist and her family are supportive, and the plan seems to be succeeding. But neither the denouement nor the outcome is quite what the narrator expected. She and Connie are together, but it takes a series of set-piece encounters with a self-help group run by a gay brother and sister; an abortion-seeking straight friend; and an appearance on a tell-all talk show before the narrator can feel ready to commit herself. She's also learned a lot—or what passes here for a lot—about love and life along the way: ``...life is all in your head. It's all in the way you decide to look at things, as simple as that. The mystery is about what it is that makes you decide.'' The effort to be wacky, provocative, and a deep thinker—as well as an exponent of sexual explicitness in lesbian writing— makes for a strained and pretentious piece of fiction. Some elements of promise, but not many.
Pub Date: June 25, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-26826-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
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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