Animates 1970s circus life via a sharp-eyed but unsympathetic lead.
A young woman rebels against her privileged upbringing during the summer of 1971.
Sarah Cunningham has no clear goals, just an intense restlessness and dissatisfaction with her life following her high school graduation. As a member of an upper-class suburban Boston family, she’s aware of the conventional path she could take, starting with attending college in the fall. But when her high school boyfriend takes a trip to Malaysia, she decides it’s time to seek an adventure of her own. She joins a traveling circus where she dons loose, flowing clothing, smokes pot, and soon falls for West, a 20-year-old elephant handler. She tackles different jobs in the circus and gets involved in the lives of the clowns, acrobats, and other performers. As the troupe wends its way through the South to its Florida winter quarters, Sarah experiences both the glittery and seamy sides of big-top life. She sees co-workers engage in covert criminal activity and participates in it herself to a degree. The Vietnam War intrudes; West and others dodge the draft; and Sarah witnesses rampant racism in the Southern states. At summer’s end, a crisis compels Sarah to reevaluate whether she should stay with the circus or go back to Boston. In her debut novel, Wellington vividly portrays both the traveling circus and the South in the early 1970s, and Sarah’s voice lends intimacy to these descriptions. Despite her powers of observation, Sarah is an unappealing lead. She befriends her fellow circus workers to satisfy her own need for excitement and independence without really taking responsibility for her actions. West comes across as more likable, despite his shady past and slim hopes for future.
Animates 1970s circus life via a sharp-eyed but unsympathetic lead.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4808-3468-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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