A love story, set in Texas after the Second World War, by the author of The Passion of Dellie O’Barr (1996), etc. Never was there a love so true as Sunny DeLony’s for Gil Dailey (or as Gil’s for Sunny). But since they—re first cousins, their parents duly lecture them not only on the danger but also the sin of incest. Even so, as teenagers, Gil and Sunny steal away for thrills under the moonlight, though they do manage to avoid having sex. Gil tries mightily to interest himself in other girls, and Sunny in other boys, but the two are so closely intertwined that anyone else seems impossible. Gil goes off to war; Sunny marries a shiftless man who beats her and then leaves her. In fathomless sorrow, she submits to the shiftless guy’s brother, who inevitably gets her pregnant. Then, in desperation, she marries a pious older man and flees to a little railroad town on the barren Texas plain. Gil returns from the war a changed man, both from his physical wounds and from the carnage he’s seen. He becomes a traveling salesman in the burgeoning automobile-tire business; he keeps a girl in every town but marries a homebody who despises sex. When he learns of Sunny’s suicidal despair, he spirits her away and the two at last become a couple. But their abandoned spouses, with the law on their side, at length pursue them, and in the deep of night Gil and Sunny steal away to France. There, they find a tragic happiness . . . but it’s all too brief. Far more than the formula romance it first appears to be, this one is a wonderfully realized historical novel and a passionate love story. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 26, 1999
ISBN: 1-56512-104-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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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