A novel with a keen understanding of the complexity of family secrets and the tensions between loving family members.
Taylor’s (Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule, 2014, etc.) debut novel charts the course of a family torn apart by mental illness and revelations about the past.
One morning, when teenage Rosie’s Aunt Sarah returns home from her job as a nurse, it’s clear that she isn’t feeling well. It’s not a typical cold, however; it turns out that she’s had a mental breakdown after getting stuck in an elevator with a patient. Against Rosie’s objections, her parents decide to commit Sarah to an institution to get her the help she needs. As Sarah gradually recovers, she and Rosie correspond via email. Sarah begins to reveal things about Rosie’s family, including their Welsh ancestry. Sarah eventually writes a story called “Rosie’s Umbrella” that refers not to her niece but to a much older relative with the same name. Rosie’s curiosity soon prompts her to research her family history, and she turns up information that’s both profound and unsettling. Part historical tour, part ancestral hunt, and part coming-of-age tale, this novel is an unusual hybrid of teenage angst and genealogical research. The story, told mainly from Rosie’s perspective, attempts to view the wildness of adolescent emotion through a rather mature, grounded, and rational lens: “Emotionally she knew what her mind did not, beyond logic, beyond reason, as if somehow deep inside she felt what Sarah knew.” Taylor uses the first few chapters to thrust readers into events that will later become central to the narrative, although their jarring presentation may be disorienting and puzzling. This quality gradually eases, though, as the novel adopts a more linear structure. The book’s depiction of the pain of buried family history and strained family relationships is poignant and provides its emotional throughline. That said, the author’s use of emails and her choice to increase the font size on the first line of each chapter are stylistically clunky. Overall, though, this is a good read for adolescents and genealogy buffs alike.
A novel with a keen understanding of the complexity of family secrets and the tensions between loving family members.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1942146063
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Garn Press
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2015
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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