A well-wrought, deeply moving story.
A small act of violence shakes the rigid social hierarchy of 1960s Quito, Ecuador, in this haunting fable.
The gulf between Tommy Montovan, the young son of an affluent American diplomat, and Chaco Achuale, an impoverished Indian boy who herds his family’s sheep near Tommy’s house, couldn’t be wider. One day, outraged by the normal callousness meted out to livestock, Tommy hurls a rock that gashes Chaco’s cheek. The consequences for Chaco are harrowing: stitches from a drunken, cut-rate doctor that leave a disfiguring scar, and a bill that forces his family to go hungry for weeks. Tommy, a sensitive, religious child, is tormented by guilt, which adds to the pressure he feels from his stepmother Miriam, a beautiful, charismatic woman who beats Tommy and his siblings for the smallest infractions of her petty rules. When Chaco and his reluctant father show up to take what is for poor Indians the almost unthinkable step of demanding justice from rich gringos, Tommy lies his way out of it–then faces a devious campaign by Miriam to get him to confess. The seemingly straightforward confrontation illuminates the pressure cooker in which each boy lives. Chaco’s is defined by the limitations of poverty, a social system forever closed to him by high walls and guard dogs and the cultivated stoicism he must call on to endure both. Tommy’s is defined by Miriam, the wicked stepmother whose fairy-tale cruelty is but one element of her fascinating complexity. These characters inhabit a world of stark contrasts, governed by nuanced (and acutely observed) rituals of courtesy and deference through which the author maps out the realities of power and privilege and the subtle moral quandaries they impose. It’s a harsh reality, brought richly to life by Allan’s clear-eyed, often lyrical prose.
A well-wrought, deeply moving story.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-933454-01-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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