Acclaimed Irish writer O'Brien (Lantern Slides, 1990, etc.) explores that ``great chasm'' between mothers and would-be mothers, with smotheringly unrelieved lyricism. Nell, a typical O'Brien protagonist, with more emotions than good sense, has rebelled against her narrow Irish upbringing by marrying an older man who's as tyrannical and unbending as her devoutly Catholic but well-intentioned mother had ever been. Later, Nell's two sons, Paddy and Tristan, become pawns as Nell, trying to escape the disintegrating marriage, has to contend with her husband's cruel machinations to prevent her from taking the children with her. The couple finally divorce; Nell gains shared custody of the boys, then begins to make a new life—not all that successfully, though, for poor Nell is a bad picker. She loses her heart to philandering Duncan; accepts drugs from the evil Dr. ``Rat''; and suffers a nasty accident when sinister Boris and girlfriend Olga move in, suggesting a mÇnage Ö trois. She does have a job—one of those vague kinds at a publishing house—which apparently pays the rent, at least most of the time, but this is not a novel about trying to be Super Mom; rather, it is about love- -for men and for children—that is never fully requited. Nell's sons, once loving, turn away from their mother as they grow older; and when older son Paddy drowns, all that Nell has left ``is the involuntary shudder that keeps telling us we are alive.'' Poor Nell, poor mothers, poor women. A great universal theme, but Nell is just too frail and foolish to do it justice. Not O'Brien's best.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-27776-1
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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
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