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QUEEN OF THE SILVER DOLLAR

From novelist Hower (Night Train Blues, 1996, etc.), a generous but unconvincing portrait of a fragile cowgirl who finds love at rehab. Twenty-one-year-old June is a tough-but-tender six foot one redhead who vows to give up booze after a violent brawl in a Wyoming bar. She narrates her stint at The Pines, a New England country-clubbish rehab and psychiatric hospital where the patients are called ``guests'' and the women wear pearls to dinner. June perks up when someone her age arrives: Jack is a scruffy and laconic sometime college student hung up on another woman. After some initial spats, though, the two start taking walks and talking. Jack reveals childhood trauma, and June talks about her brother Bobby, who shot himself. Meantime, June's avuncular shrink helps her realize how responsible she's felt for her brother's attempted suicide, while her various patient pals indulge in antic goings-on. But despite a tendency to be caretaker at large, June's bravado breaks down over Jack: Are they friends or are they flirting? Her sole experience with men consists of being groped and assaulted by drunken cowboys. Can she handle sober, friendly sex? Well, she can, actually, because she and Jack are unguarded, honest, and wildly attracted to each other. But the new attachment brings a new fear: What will happen to the affair after they've both been discharged? In spite of occasional powerful moments, such as an outbreak of collective hostility among the patients during a screening of Suddenly Last Summer, the action lags for most part, punctuated only by actings out, and by June and Jack's far- fetched romance. Worse, June remains a cipher: while she's portrayed as a popular den-mother who's both tomboyish and vulnerable, her character seems more self-consciously eccentric than genuinely confused. An inoffensive fairy tale, then, of speedy healing and plain-talking young love.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997

ISBN: 1-877946-92-3

Page Count: 220

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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