Ritz (a biography of Marvin Gaye, Divided Soul, 1985) follows one spicy show-biz melodrama (Family Blood, 1991) with another: this time in the tale of three generations of black female performers pounding on closed doors in Hollywood and New York. Nineteen-year-old Georgia Harmony arrives on L.A.'s hip black Central Avenue in 1945 fully expecting to become the next Lena Horne, and right away sets to work ensuring her fame by entangling three powerful male admirers into her steel-gauge net. Her lovers include Herb Montgomery, a black filmmaker who casts Georgia in a low-budget movie that never makes it off the southern black theater circuit; Sol Solomon, a screenwriter from Brooklyn who loves Georgia but can't bring himself to marry her; and Peter Gold, the rich son-in-law of a studio mogul who abruptly flees to Europe with Georgia in tow. Gold dies shortly thereafter, leaving Georgia with a daughter, Chanel, who only Georgia knows was sired by Montgomery. Georgia returns to the States and a life of occasional modeling gigs and sitcom roles, while Chanel grows up overweight, neglected, and angry. As an adult rhythm-and-blues performer, Chanel defies her fastidious mother by abusing drugs and having an illegitimate daughter of her own, and it's Marika Harmony, having inherited her grandmother's beauty and her mother's guts, who wins fame and fortune as a pop singer in New York—helped, coincidentally, by Sol Solomon's nephew, Herb Montgomery's son, and a previously unconnected black psychologist, all of whom love Marika madly. Flushed with triumph, Georgia and Chanel confess the identities of their daughters' fathers to People magazine while the Harmonys' male admirers plan a movie starring Georgia and Marika—all of them content, it seems, just to be of service to the objects of their desire. Sappy, soapy, and forgettable.
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1992
ISBN: 1-55611-283-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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
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