by Claire Moïse ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 9, 2009
Authentic, exciting and well-researched.
In Adele, Grace and Celine–the most recent literary offspring of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre–Moise grants readers a glimpse into the lives of three women connected to Mr. Rochester.
Adele Varens was an inquisitive, intuitive child while growing up at Thornfield Manor, the home of her guardian, Edward Rochester. She discovered a crazy woman in the attic early in her stay, and could also sense the connection between her governess, Jane, and the man she would eventually knowas her father, Rochester himself. Adele’s natural gift of insight comes in handy when she becomes one of the first women to attend university in London and during the war in Crimea where she works alongside Florence Nightingale. When she marries Sir Garnet Gresham and settles at Drayton Abbey, Adele eschews a life of leisure. Instead, she works hard to restore an herb garden to glory, raises her children, makes friends and keeps up with current scientific knowledge and theory. When Adele inherits the letters that passed between her mother, Celine, and Grace, the servant who took care of the mad woman in the attic at Rochester’s estate, she learns much more, good and bad, about her family and the people she loves. Jane Eyre has become an iconic novel, sparking many sequels, revisions, screen and stage versions. Moïse writes hers with a delicate 19th-century sensibility that serves her characters well. They thrive under the author’s care, much like the herb gardens under Adele’s green thumb. Even as she tackles tough subjects of the times, like the clash between the religious view of how life began and the newfangled theories of evolution, the writing is entertaining and deft. Readers will easily follow Moïse’s smooth transitions between the epistolary form and Adele’s first-person narrative, even with a multitude of characters from past and present to account for.
Authentic, exciting and well-researched.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-6026-4501-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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