A tranquilizing catalogue of depressing teenaged antics.
Merrick’s tedious, benumbing and overlong first novel delineates the trashy travails of a pair of wayward siblings battling their born-again mom.
Older sister Ruth acts out for the first time as a young teen in rural Pennsylvania by using a garden trowel to smash the teeth of a boy she’s obsessively jealous of, then turning the weapon on her own mouth. From then on Ruth’s self-destructive antics only get more outrageous as she descends into drug and alcohol abuse, unbridled sex and runaway dramatics. Her family observes in helpless anguish. Unstable, self-absorbed mother Amandine, a secretary at an evangelical Christian church, is long on suffering, short on nurturing. Father Lyman soon flees the coop. Younger sister Racinda, who watches Ruth for clues to her own behavior, refers to her sister as The Devil; Ruth returns the favor by calling her Creature. Grandmother Button, who mostly took care of Ruth when she was small, is now relegated to watching from the sidelines as Amandine fails to offer her children love and protection. When Ruth runs away, Amandine, who’s moved to Sacramento, is sure she has gone off to join a cult; in fact, she is living precariously on the streets and supporting her drug habit with prostitution. Meanwhile, Racinda gets caught in a bad high-school scene involving drugs, and hanging out with a lonely neighbor boy, Max. Later, she becomes “starfucker” to a band, eventually working her way up to the lead, Joey, who unceremoniously dumps her. Each of the characters alternately tells his or her side of the story from the early 1970s onward. By the end, Ruth is in her early 20s and making a timid effort at rapprochement, while Amandine enjoys the romantic attention of a scary cult deprogrammer. Yet the story offers little redemption; the emotional chasm is simply too wide.
A tranquilizing catalogue of depressing teenaged antics.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2005
ISBN: 0-9768801-0-5
Page Count: 524
Publisher: Demimonde
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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