An ingratiating first novel that centers on the growth of a young woman whose mores and judgments were shaped within the solidly Irish-Catholic blue-collar neighborhood of Jackson Heights (20 minutes to Manhattan by subway). The story of Delia Mary Delaney, nÇe Rooney—set in the early 60's and before—pops and hums with a multitude of depth-sounding recognitions so acute in sound and sight that the reader is home in the Heights after a few pages. When 19-year-old Delia became pregnant by huge, handsome Maurice Delaney—who was going to marry her anyway—Mae Rooney had to tell her husband Denis, Delia's volatile father. Denis kicked her and kicked her—after all, she'd disgraced them—but Denis (one of 12 children of a wild woman in Ireland) died just before Delia's baby Maureen was born. Maurice, now a cop, is a drinker like Denis, but he's a good man. There are flashbacks to the wedding (tacky, loving, hilarious), the first three months of a screaming baby—the frenzy and aching love, devotions at the altar of housework—and, in the apartment downstairs, there's also Mae, that ``Queen of Saints,'' devoted mother and grandmother, crazily prejudiced, loudmouthed, ever-scrubbing, ever-cooking, ever-present tyrant. Brothers (both fallen away from early promise), friends, neighbors come into focus, along with disastrous trips away—cold and desertion in Manhattan; a beer-soaked Maurice, and anger at the beach. It is a tragedy as close as her heart that dooms, and then saves, Delia for a new start in one day of shocking laughter and joy. A remarkable evocation of a tight little island peopled by pre-Vatican II Irish and a younger generation, unlike their mothers, brogue-less, but ``not-quite ready to move on.'' From the fly-specked windows of the Shamrock Bar, in the ``damp air under the el,'' to the cemetery opposite Arthur's Discounts—it's real and warms the heart.
Pub Date: June 22, 1992
ISBN: 0-15-111810-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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