From Channer, (Waiting in Vain, 1998, etc.), a fairy-tale novella of betrayal and hope.
A 14-year-old girl’s journey from beach home to city, from family to strangers, from idealism to realism, and from girlhood to womanhood.
Estrella Thompson is a girl on the move. Accused of being a “curse” on the fishing beach where she lives, she huffily takes leave of her grandfather and soon-to-be-dead grandmother to seek out urban life inland. Driven by a love of reading and a desire to push beyond the limitations of her childhood experience on a Jamaica-like island called San Carlos, she leaves her home in disgust because “Nobody ain’t care to know ‘bout nothing.” She constructs an idealized image of what awaits her, including the long-desired “yellow satin pumps” of the title, but must constantly make finely calibrated adjustments to her vision. Along the way she runs into thieves, sweet-talkers, soldiers and frauds. (One man she meets lived for a time in Paris, an incandescent city of magic to Estrella—and then later, he explains, “moved to France.” Another would-be seducer introduces himself as Simón Bolívar.) She confronts both the subtleties and crudities of racism. She yields up her body but never her feistiness. And always she’s looking, looking—for a better life, for occasions to “try new things. Test limits.” Her native dialect is Sancoche, a poetic patois of clipped speech and emphatic double (and triple) negatives. While the story takes place in 1942, the war setting is intrinsic neither to plot nor to character, for there’s something timeless about Estrella’s yearning for a better life. Her journey to Seville, the capital of San Carlos, is larded with more danger than even she imagined possible. Eventually she does make it to the city and meets St. William Rawle, a savior of sorts; ultimately her life reaches precarious equilibrium rather than happiness.
From Channer, (Waiting in Vain, 1998, etc.), a fairy-tale novella of betrayal and hope.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-933354-26-2
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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
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