True love and a terror in the hold are the entwined themes of Beaven’s US debut, set in the twilight years of the British Empire, as an ocean liner en route to Australia carries a cargo destined to upset the social order in more ways than one. In 1959, Ralph was a boy at sea with his mother—and with the charming American seaman they had both deserted his father for in order to start as a new family far from London. From forty years later, Ralph struggles to remember that voyage, hampered by the fact that all trace of the ship’s existence seems to have vanished in the interim. As he recalls the deception involved in leaving his father, the terrible storm that drove the ship off course in the Atlantic, the children of other first-class passengers who shunned him for his strange clothes and his lesser-class origins (as well as his improper circumstances), and his eerie discovery of something monstrous below, other lives are invoked as well. For Ralph’s mystery liner also had Penny and Robert on board, she traveling to Australia alone to join her husband, with their children in boarding school to follow later, he going there as a satellite-tracking technician. From first sight they were mutually attracted, and by the time the ship passed through the Suez Canal and into the Indian Ocean they had embarked on a course that no amount of snubbery and moral indignation from their fellow passengers could alter. Theirs was a lusty, deliciously uninhibited affair, which both knew would change their lives once they reached journey’s end. But before they could cross the last stretch of open ocean, the monster Ralph glimpsed turned the promise of new beginnings into a cold war nightmare. Mystery and morality are cleverly and effectively combined, but the degree to which events are steeped in a stuffy British outlook, while no doubt realistic, makes for some ponderous reading on this side of the pond.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-24100-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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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