A first novel with a fascinating concept falters when it leaves the main premise behind to examine less interesting byways. Twenty-eight-year-old Martha Ward answers an ad that reads ``Wanted: Woman to talk to. Three nights a week. Three hundred dollars a night.'' For Martha, life has become an endless, uneventful endurance test. She has few friends and little responsibility; she's divorced from husband Allen—their-eight- year-old daughter Jewel lives with him and his new wife—and she has nothing much to do but show up for her inexplicable job as a topless waitress. Intrigued by the ad, she answers it and is given very precise instructions: go to a pre-reserved hotel room and put on a blue sweatsuit, blue gloves and socks, and a blue masked hood, thereby totally obscuring her physical presence. The man who placed the ad, Dr. Hamilton, wants to talk about beauty. Invigorated by her anonymity and their discussions, Martha grows to depend on the meetings as the arena in which she can be herself. Revealing to Dr. Hamilton her sad childhood—unloved by a superficial and fickle father, forever out of sync with her beautiful, mentally ill mother—Martha discusses the expectations and pitfalls of beauty. Meanwhile, she begins an affair with hunky Latino actor Reuben, a sweet guy who's obsessed with appearance. When, in quick succession, Reuben leaves her and the doctor ends their sessions, Martha is devastated—though the novel takes yet another unexpected turn before the abrupt close. Provocative issues of appearance and reality are raised here, but Wagman does little with them, dodging deeper matters by letting Martha's relationships with Reuben and flashbacks to her childhood dominate the story. A disappointing debut from screenwriter Wagman, especially considering its intriguing initial idea.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-87805-982-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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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