The tale of a twisted saint, a woman so possessed by philosophy and so desperate to experience ``the infinite possibilities in all things'' that she enters a metaphysical wonderland she can't escape—a finely wrought cautionary fable about trying to satisfy the yearning of the soul by intellect alone. Eve wakes up in an apartment in downtown Manhattan, hallucinating that she is wearing a bloody, feathery shawl made of mashed sparrows. This episode of madness is soon replaced with a dream vision about being trapped inside a descending spiral. Eventually, Eve's hard-working waitress-sister returns to the apartment and rouses Eve for a lunch with their father, an exacting theologian who unnerves her. We also learn that Eve, while in high school, watched her gym-teacher mother fall to her death. This loss left almost no mark, however, compared with the constant visceral memories she has of the suicide of her childhood friend Karen. While her sister supports her, Eve struggles to finish her dissertation on ``The Infinite Possibilities in All Things,'' an endless elaboration of a theory Eve calls ``The Pearl String.'' The ``First Pearl,'' according to Eve, is the world of everyday finite reality. Most people never suspect that there are levels of reality beyond this dreary pearl, but Eve knows from experience that ``once you get out of that First Pearl, there is a compelling force moving you along from one pearl to the next....'' Overwhelmed by her own visions and philosophy, she travels to Assisi, where she seeks a strange absolution by bedding strangers in the fields around the monastery of St. Francis. Back in New York, however, she is soon consumed by her ``Pearl String,'' and it is a downward spiraling vortex that will not let her up for air. Despite some workshop arty bits, a first novel that glimmers with wit and heart.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-932511-64-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 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
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