A slow-boiling but richly atmospheric exploration of late-life love and regret.
Two former lovers reunite at the site of their decades-ago romance on a deserted moor in this sequel.
In Dempster’s (Chapel on the Moor, 2014) preceding novel, a young man named Frank Dole and a young woman called Merritt Geary are fascinated by the restoration of an old stone chapel built on an island’s wild moor far from the nearest village. Frank and Merritt also become captivated with each other, and the kind of torrid romance blossoms that readers have been conditioned to think will last a lifetime, even if the chapel doesn’t survive that first book. The sequel opens with the dashing of those expectations. Fifty years have passed since that original adventure; Frank married a woman named Sandra and settled down in San Francisco and Merritt likewise wed. The two have kept in touch only sporadically and superficially—but that changes when Frank receives an email from Merritt proposing that they meet. She’s recently lost her husband to cancer in Italy, and she’s coming to the United States for a class reunion and would like to see Frank before she goes back to Europe. A patiently elaborated story flows naturally from this ordinary beginning, a moody tale that will take the vivid characters to Boston, New York, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, and will also return them, inevitably, to their past on the moor all those decades ago. Dempster writes with an easy, approachable narrative voice. But it sometimes becomes burdened with ridiculous elements, as when Frank’s wife, during a discussion about a woman her husband hasn’t seen in 50 years, says, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Frank,” or when the author attempts to reproduce a New England accent (“You folks was so excited when you came home talkin’ about yoah discovery, it clean slipped my mind to mention this phone call I got earliah”). In addition, Bostonians will wince at the mention of “Boston Commons.” Still, fans of the previous book should be intrigued by this unexpected kind of sequel.
A slow-boiling but richly atmospheric exploration of late-life love and regret.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79808-072-6
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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