A general, lukewarm approach in loosely related stories without a burning theme or focus.
A series of normalized, slice-of-life vignettes from first-timer Poliner shows the sad fallout of a divorce on a 1970s Jewish family.
The title is taken from the Hartford insurance company where father Daniel Kahn is an executive, providing an unusually lucrative life for his family in Wells, Connecticut, where other dads are machinists at Pratt and Whitney. The Kahns—homemaker mother Naomi, daughters Carolyn and Hannah—are the only Jews in town, owners of a big, newly renovated house and fancy stereo. The money from provider Dad flows freely, and shopping trips to Loehmann’s are frequent. But the Kahn parents aren’t getting along: they differ on the election of Richard Nixon, then on Watergate, as Dad has conservative ideas and Mom begins to assert different feelings of her own. “Can you support what you feel with facts?” Father asks scornfully of his wife, indicating the deepening fissures between them. Mom’s burgeoning self-awareness coincides with the two girls’ teenaged years, and Dad, grown demanding, critical, bossy and ineffectual, is squeezed out, after 23 years of marriage. Other vignettes pursue the painful adolescence of daughter Carolyn and her popular, anorexic girlfriend Clarissa as they smoke pot under the eyes of their elders; Hannah’s first sexual experience, with boyfriend Jackie; her later pregnancy, at 31, in 1993, when she finally decides to have a baby with him; and Carolyn’s going to college in Miami, to get as far away from Wells as possible. Poliner explores the various well-trod currents of the era—the women’s movement, the exercise craze, the explosion of sex, the general smashing of familial relationships—only to come around to Hannah’s rueful conclusion as she holds her new baby in her arms: “Mostly I feel like I’ve never lived a life.”
A general, lukewarm approach in loosely related stories without a burning theme or focus.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-57962-112-0
Page Count: 221
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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