A lackluster modern love story by the author of Relative Sins (1992). ``Oh, God, it's you,'' moans badly wounded Detective Lieutenant Carlin Squire as she looks up, half-conscious, from the operating table at Mercy Hospital to see trauma surgeon Ben Dameroff. Flashback to 1966 and Westerfield, N.Y., a depressed town not far from Albany. Ben and Carlin are two smart kids from the projects, antagonists at first, who grow up to be lovers. But the course of true love never runs smooth, especially if your families are dysfunctional and your parents' dreams haven't come true. When Ben's sister Natasha discovers that their mother and Carlin's dad are having an affair, she plays a prank that kills one and cripples the other. Ben and Carlin each blame the other's parent and split up. He goes on to become a surgeon, working his way through school playing poker; she wins a scholarship to Harvard, then becomes a police detective, called Cambridge by the other cops. He's very handsome and has lovers. She's very successful and lives with a philandering British fashion photographer. Natasha becomes a supermodel and marries a world-famous film director. Everyone lives in New York City. Ben and Carlin come together again, only to be separated when Natasha murders the villain, another Westerfield alumnus, who has been blackmailing her into sordid, dehumanizing sex. The plot resolves sadly, then happily. Ben and Carlin, true survivors, travel upstate for a family funeral, reunite, and vow undying devotion. Victor examines the ways that parents help or hurt their children's futures; filial loyalty and disappointment make up the truest parts of her narrative, but the bulk of it is fairly lifeless, even for a genre in which no one is looking for an excess of novelty. The Platters did it better. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-84981-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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
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