A promising first novel, ostensibly about the struggles inherent in a musician's life, though more pointedly suggesting the far greater struggles intrinsic to modern relationships. Twenty-six-year-old Gala's life has been enveloped by music: lessons at six, a performing-arts high school, and, finally, graduation from Juilliard. As a dedicated oboist, she has lived in the joy of music, but now her happiness and determination dwindle each day as failed orchestral auditions leave her questioning her gift. Performance anxiety grips her, and each attempt on stage becomes more unbearable. Perhaps even more anxiety-producing is the disintegration of her parents' volatile marriage. Her father, a brilliant, manic-depressive historian at Columbia, and her mother, a suicidal has-been pianist, use Gala in their war against each other, burdening her with their secrets, challenging her loyalty. In fact, the two are so compelling, emotional, and passionate that they occasionally overshadow interest in the narrator herself. The story is strongest in exploring the impossibilities of a child parenting her parents, when real tension infuses the plot—the three are unstable enough that anything might happen. But this is not all Gala faces: Not only has her boyfriend, Tom, just won a plum role as violinist in a renowned quartet, but her best friend is surpassing her in their endless rounds of auditions. The strain of her parents' break-up, her mother's desperation, her father's new lover (who may not, it emerges, be so new after all) force Gala to question the fate of her own relationship, and, even more unsettling, her future as a musician. A brief affair confuses issues further, and the storyline becomes labored—though its ending, in which Garbus offers some unexpected (and unconventional) resolutions of these various dilemmas, recaptures the intensity of the early passages. Music may be the motif, but, altogether, it's the vividly realistic examination of love and promises broken that make this a compelling debut.
Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-94380-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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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