A swell women's page-turner by Chamberlain (Keeper of the Light, 1992, etc.), in which incest survivors overcome their past and proceed through pain, growth, and mystery toward a syrupy happy ending. As children, Claire and Vanessa Harte spent summers with their grandfather, who carved horses for a real carousel in his barn. Claire has only wonderful memories—in sharp contrast to Vanessa, who was raped in the carousel's green chariot and has led a different existence altogether. Thirty years later, Claire and her husband, Jon Mathias, are an enviable supercouple who head a Virginia rehabilitation foundation. Jon has been in a wheelchair since his teens; it was Claire—with her gift for seeing the silver lining in every gray cloud—who turned his life around. Driving home on a snowy night, they see a young woman poised on the edge of the Harper's Ferry bridge. Unable to save her, Claire watches her dive to her death, looking, as the street lamps shine on her snow- covered body, like a falling crystal angel. That image leads Claire to flashbacks. Her perfect world begins to crack, and she begins an affair with the suicide's brother, with whom she feels safe enough to conduct the terrifying investigation into her past. In Seattle, Vanessa has struggled through alcoholism and drug abuse to become a doctor and an activist for molested children. She has a devoted lover and finally feels strong enough to face her perpetrators. Chamberlain manages a lot of plot with great skill, strengthening her story by using devices more common to action thrillers and mysteries and by telling about carousels, adolescent medicine, and how to have sex with the disabled. Unfortunately, her denouement, in a Senate hearing room, in front of a TV camera and a congressional pedophile, becomes suddenly very pat, like a successful summer movie. Nevertheless, ripe storytelling that deserves a prominent place in the beach bag. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-017612-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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