Cold, rock-real times of elemental survival within a net of poverty and deprivation, as well as the individual and familial tactics that somehow pound out paths of survival—all in a first novel of searing impact set over the course of two decades in rural and urban Maine. In 1958, the Rudge family—father Jarvis, mother Viola, and children Kendrick, Krista, and retarded son Flynn—watch the boss's chicken house (and a job and shelter) go up in flames, a fire ``prancing on quick arched feet.'' The Rudges move on, dogged by bad luck, but the family is tight in loyalty. And there is compassion, as they befriend a child victim of a sloppy foster-care program—Freddie, who boards with a monstrous pair, one of whom kills Freddie's tiny baby brother and conceals the crime. The Rudges will cross lineages with the Pembrokes when Krista grows up and marries Logan Pembroke, son of Gage, a batterer, a blamer, a hater. Logan, who will father three children (all will reject him, one by one), is merely a mask of the eerily primeval, de-fanged killer that was his old man. (Logan sneers on the edge of a pit where his son—he'd beat his dog to death—methodically smashes the bike his father had given him as the dying sun engulfs Logan in fire, ``huge, and tipped on his cane like a maimed god''). Over the years, innocence is outraged and hurt, and most often goodness is not rewarded. Yet there are escapes for a younger generation, as well as moments of shared joy, and the loveliness of the land and sky—for those who would see. Moore's people are wholly realized, and even the most vicious have within them a nugget of self-knowledge that marks them as, alas, human. With a prose as clean as an arctic night, a fiercely moving novel about primitive ancient maneuverings against destiny in a modern age.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-63860-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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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