A first novel with a particularly chilling take on the theme of suburban wholesomeness run amok. When the Powell family moved to Meander, Ill., in 1959, their peaceful domesticity became a nightmare that 10-year- old Penny had predicted but could not prevent. Now an adult with children of her own, Penny relates the story of her family's tragic year in Meander with the insight she had as a precocious child. Bob and Dotty Powell made an auspicious start by moving into the grand house that had formerly belonged to Chan Bishop, Meander's wealthiest citizen and playboy. But keeping up with the neighbors required an outlay of cash that Bob couldn't afford, especially when he discovered that his partner, Archie, was stealing from him. Bob never told Dotty the extent of their impending financial disaster, and she happily—if awkwardly—slipped into her new lifestyle, transforming herself from rube to socialite. Meanwhile, while Penny's teenage sister Nancy was becoming an anorexic, Penny hoarded money and food in an effort to save them all from the doom she sensed was imminent. Penny, obsessed with the story of how Chan's wife had deserted him, thought that if Chan's wife came back, her own family would be safe. And she was right, in a way, because Chan's loneliness, like Archie's dishonesty, would play a part in the Powells' decline. Yet the Powells' marriage had never been idyllic. Bob failed constantly in an effort to gain his father's approval and belittled Dotty to aggrandize himself, while she was forever frustrated in her domestic role and angry that she'd been denied a medical career. Penny discovers years later that it was neither the money nor Meander that was responsible for her family's undoing: It was Bob and Dotty themselves—their flawed relationship, their unresolved problems. The story moves along like a car accelerating toward a cliff, pulling the reader over with a heart-stopping—but satisfying—crash.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-56512-018-3
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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