A very adult remake of an after-school special that’s driven by story, not lessons.
Minor vices and poor timing wreak havoc on the life of a reluctant housewife.
This debut novel by Klein owes much to the dramas of Tom Perrotta, mimicking the subdued desire and quiet angst of a certain breed of suburbanite. The focus here is drugs: who has them, why they use them, who’s supplying them, and why America has such a jones for the stuff. Our main prism into this multifaceted tale is 30-something mother-of-two Gwen Raine, who needs a little something to help her unwind. After scoring $500 worth of weed from her ex-boyfriend, an ambitious but unethical restaurateur named Jude Gates, Gwen smashes into a pensioner with dementia, killing him instantly. Though she wasn’t at fault, Gwen soon finds herself on the wrong side of a small-town detective with a mean streak who threatens to charge her with felony possession and endanger her custody of her kids unless she fesses up to who gave her the dope. This story line has plenty of verve, but Klein muddies up the water with a less interesting subplot. Ironically, Gwen’s husband Brian is an executive at a pharmaceutical company, one that is riskily marketing antidepressants as fat-fighting drugs. Meanwhile, Jude is deeply embedded in a scheme to bring massive amounts of hard drugs, not to mention trafficked girls, across the border through Montreal. He thinks it’s the deal that will buy him freedom, but as we all know from too many movies, the deal doesn’t usually go down like it should. Klein has a nimble storytelling style, and readers who dig these types of melodramas will find some richly intertwined stories. If he can learn not to throw in the whole kitchen sink, this novelist will have a promising future.
A very adult remake of an after-school special that’s driven by story, not lessons.Pub Date: July 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-71681-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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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