A moving portrait of the ties that bind.
A family gathers around a dying patriarch who reveals a transforming secret.
In advance of their widowed father’s arrival from California, each of the three successful, adult Bramble children—Margaret, Edie and Max—experience private internal crises: Margaret, a take-charge wife and mother of three in suburban New Jersey, worries that she is not up to the task of caring for her father. At the same time, she tries to talk herself out of an irrational yearning to have a fourth child. Edie, the youngest of the three, on the surface seems to be thriving—she lives in Manhattan and works hard at a rewarding job in television. But her hidden, life-long battle with an eating disorder is finally taking its toll. And Max, a producer of infomercials and corporate videos who wonders where his artistic aspirations went, quits his job in a fit of pique, even though he is the sole breadwinner for his family. That was three weeks ago and he still hasn’t told his wife, who believes his changed behavior signals he is having an affair. Neither the ease with which their father settles in at Margaret’s, nor his articulate stoicism about his incurable illness, assuages his children’s panic. The family members most at ease with the situation are Margaret’s three young children, whose sweet frankness about death could teach all the adults a lesson, and Arthur himself, who, in deciding to reveal a lifelong secret he and his wife kept from their children, has made peace with himself and his imminent death. Minot (The Tiny One, 1999) moves nimbly from one character’s consciousness to the next, illustrating the power of family to hurt and to heal. She is especially adept at conveying the heckle-jeckle confusion that rules a household full of children and the clarion moments of truth that occasionally sound above the din.
A moving portrait of the ties that bind.Pub Date: July 21, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-4269-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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