A heartfelt but uneven tale about age and loss.
In this inspirational debut novel, a man dreams that his dead mother comes back to spend a day with the family.
Family is incredibly important to Greg Peters. When he gets a call from his stepmother saying his father has had a heart attack, his world is thrown off its axis. Greg rushes to the hospital and waits for news, recalling all the memories he has of his father, mother, brothers, and grandparents and how these people shaped the man he has become. He learns his father will have to undergo a triple bypass. “With his years of smoking and his COPD,” a doctor tells Greg and the rest of the family, “there are a lot of risks and challenges ahead. It’s by no means going to be an easy procedure.” Though his father survives the surgery, complications force him to stay in the hospital for months. Greg continues to see him and to reflect on their time together. One day, while sleeping in his father’s hospital room, Greg has a dream in which he returns to the family cottage and sees his mother, who has been dead for 14 years. He asks: “How is it that I’m standing here looking and talking to my mom?” She replies: “I have no idea either, Greg. But here I am, and you have me for the day.” With the members of his family back together for one day, can Greg say all the things he wants to tell them? Howard’s prose is simple and sentimental, and he creates a warm sense of nostalgia with the numerous flashbacks to Greg’s youth. At one point, the protagonist recalls a valuable pep talk from his father: “Ever since you were fourteen years old, I watched you at trade shows, interacting with people, and I could tell back then that you have what it takes…I could see the drive and determination you had at everything you did. There’s no doubt you are one special kid.” But the flashbacks are sometimes too boilerplate to captivate, and they do little to invigorate the plodding frame of the narrative. By the time the dream begins (and the audience will be well aware that it is a dream), readers will likely have lost any investment they had in the novel’s outcome.
A heartfelt but uneven tale about age and loss.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2808-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
