ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR

Name: ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR
Author: Clare Morrall
ISBN: 0-06-073445-0

by Clare Morrall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2004

Morrall’s first, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker, handles the exploration of loss better than it does the rattle of...

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The travails of a severely depressed young woman after the death of her baby.

See Kitty outside the school gates. Parents are picking up kids. Everything is yellow: for Kitty, yellow equals happiness. (Morrall leans hard on color imagery.) Now see Kitty sneak into the school. We realize her “yellow period” is more like mood indigo, for Kitty has no business here and has to beat a hasty retreat. Three years earlier, her womb had ruptured while she was pregnant with her first child, and she’s still in shock. “The world is made for children,” she thinks, “and without them you’re no one.” The 32-year-old Kitty and her husband James live in adjacent apartments in Birmingham, England. The odd arrangement satisfies Kitty’s need to grieve alone, though it disturbs James, who is loving but tight-lipped, unable to discuss their trauma. So child-husband and child-wife tiptoe around each other—though it’s the novel’s most important relationship and should have gotten more attention. But it competes for the spotlight with Kitty’s family across town: Her father Guy, a mildly bohemian artist, and a whole clump of older brothers, sisters-in-law and nieces. Kitty was raised by her father. Her mother died in a car accident when she was three and Kitty has an aching need to know more about her, but Guy and the brothers won’t talk. Then, surprise! Two dramatic revelations about her past devastate Kitty further and cause her to cross the line into a twilight world of delusions and lawlessness. She steals a baby from the hospital, then dumps it in favor of Megan, a runaway and pyromaniac. The two take an unhappy trip to the seaside before Kitty remembers to call home. A deadly fire at the end leaves Kitty essentially unchanged.

Morrall’s first, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker, handles the exploration of loss better than it does the rattle of family skeletons, but it’s still a drab, one-note affair.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-06-073445-0

Page Count: 336

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.