The first novel by Betts (Heading West, 1981) in over ten years indulges in the clichÇs of domestic melodrama—a divorced couple, the illness of their only child, the burden and joy of non- nuclear families—but it's all done in an inviting Southern voice. Unfortunately, Betts has long been outclassed by those who followed her earlier example: Lee Smith, Marianne Gingher, and Kaye Gibbons, to name a few. Mary Thompson, the clever and sharp-witted daughter of a highway patrolman in North Carolina, is the latest in a long line of spunky fictional Southern girls. Full of yearning for the mother who ran off when she was ten, Mary develops an obsession with horses. Her stoical dad, Frank, has no idea how to raise a girl but is full of good intentions. When Mary is diagnosed with chronic renal failure, Frank's life also takes a turn for the worse. He can't commit to either of the women in his life—a local journalist or Mary's riding instructor—and finds matters further complicated by the return of his ex, a vain beauty whose selfishness has tragic consequences and whose entire family is considered trashy by Frank's supportive, devout mother and his sarcastic father. Dialysis stunts Mary's development into womanhood and makes her an impatient candidate for a transplant. While her grandparents bury all their long-nurtured grudges, her mother—the ideal donor- -disappears with her new, young husband. The teary denouement comes after a blow-by-blow narrative of Mary's illness. In her effort to survey the range of human reactions to the suffering of others, Betts relies on too many pointless subplots that just wander into oblivion and fantasy. She also suffers from a penchant for puns and one-liners, putting words in her protagonists mouths that are inappropriately out of character. Still, guaranteed to exercise the tear ducts.
Pub Date: April 8, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42621-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
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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