The author has plenty of fun with the visiting heroines, and Penny’s stay in the mental institution is certainly scary, but...
An imaginative, if uneven, debut novel about 13-year-old Penny Entwhistle and the literary heroines that recuperate at her mother’s bed-and-breakfast.
While the Watergate scandal dominates the nightly news, the more pressing concern for Penny is ousting melodramatic Deirdre, a heroine in Irish mythology, from the house, sending her back to whatever overwrought story she came from. Fantastical intrusions on reality have been part of Penny’s life since birth (in fact, the mystery of her paternity may have more to do with the appearance of the heroines, and occasional hero, than her mother has ever let on), and over the years she has come to expect houseguests with far more serious problems than the average traveler. Emma Bovary, Franny Glass, Scarlett O’Hara, Daisy Buchanan—they all come when things get a bit too harried in their fictional lives and need a break from their own plots. The mechanics of this phenomenon are dealt with early in the novel—it’s a mystery, plain and simple. But now Penny’s getting sick of all the activity, and she wants a little attention for herself. In the woods one evening she meets Celtic King Duncan, looking for Deirdre, and Penny promises to lure Deidre into the woods for him to take back to ancient Ireland. When Penny returns home, the police are there and soon Penny is locked up in the loony bin. Betrayed by her mother (she’s afraid Duncan will hurt Penny), woozy on meds and longing for a more normal life, Penny begins to question her own sanity and everything she’s known to be true. Her only plan is to bet on the impossible—she gets a message out to Duncan and hopes he and his trusty steed can break her out of the asylum.
The author has plenty of fun with the visiting heroines, and Penny’s stay in the mental institution is certainly scary, but the literary and real worlds are disconnected, negating the existential promise of the plot.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4810-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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
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