Elaine Kagan's years as a television and theater actress lend a dimension of theatrical perceptiveness to her writing. Her finely tuned ear captures character through dialogue at perfect pitch. The Girls, her first novel, gets off to a promising start in the monologues of five women, friends since high school 20 years earlier, after a sixth friend, Jessie, shoots her husband, Pete Chickery. A series of convincing testimonies by the women reveals a kaleidoscopic picture of Pete: stereotypical womanizer, wife- abuser, the ideal male who knows exactly how to enhance each woman's self-image, the perfect lover, and the hated brother. Pete Chickery, killed before the book begins, dominates the novel. The fast pace of the action prevents the characters and the reader from questioning the assumption that Jessie killed Pete in self-defense. The image of Pete as a violent man is sustained both by what Jessie tells us and by the reminiscing of their son James. Even Jessie's rampage of self-destruction that ends with a slashed wrist does not prepare us for Pete's final postmortem monologue in which he recounts the events of the fateful Tuesday morning: how he followed Jessie to their friends' house because he couldn't bear to leave town without a reconciliation; how his motive was love, not violence; how, seeing Jesse pointing the gun at her own throat, he saved her but was accidentally killed when the gun went off in the struggle. Despite a writing style that is crisp and clean, tightly woven, with the dramatic punch of a whodunit, we are left with the unanswered question: Was Pete a hero or a villain? To make a reader suspend disbelief, a writer must sustain that reader's trust. In the end, this novel breaks that trust with a surprise ending that runs counter to the evidence we've been given.
Pub Date: May 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43395-3
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
