Witty, intelligent activist-caper, with a thought-provoking narrative that doesn’t get swamped in its own satire.
Trouble ensues when an environazi from the Left Coast hatches a plan to take down a mountain development—and seduces a few local women to help him pull it off.
Kyle Hess is one of those writers who are read only by other writers—in this case, nature writers like those in Erin Furlong’s Burlington, Vermont, workshop. A transplanted Oregonian, Erin was once Kyle’s lover back home, and she invites him to meet with her workshop and share his insights on nature writing. Not just a mere tree-hugger, Kyle is an outright saboteur who has organized and executed violent attacks against developments in California and the Pacific Northwest, and Erin’s students quickly find that he is more interested in talking about Mount Mansfield than writing. That’s because Mount Mansfield (Vermont’s highest mountain) is now being eyed by real estate developers who want to build a resort, as well as by broadcasters who have already started to erect transmitting towers at the peak. Kyle systematically works his way into the beds of three of Erin’s students—llama farmer Lauren, realtor Marianna, and sports bimbo Rachel—bringing each into his underground plan to subvert the construction. Marianna is an unwilling accomplice from the first, and Lauren becomes increasingly wary when she learns that Kyle is being hunted by angry movement types from California over some mishap that he fomented back there. But Rachel is a total groupie, and they are all madly enough in love with him to push their qualms out the window along with their self-respect. So we know there will be big trouble soon. Erin alone seems to know what Kyle is capable of, but she still goes weak in the knees when he’s about.
Witty, intelligent activist-caper, with a thought-provoking narrative that doesn’t get swamped in its own satire.Pub Date: April 16, 2004
ISBN: 1-58465-357-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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