Sometimes farcical, largely sincere—and ultimately trivial.
Rich parents, neglected brats, an overworked caregiver.
First-novelists and former nannies McLaughlin and Kraus get the details right: in acid asides, they limn the décor, trendy therapies, and the pretensions of social-climbing Manhattanites. It’s the woebegone children who often suffer, according to the authors’ young heroine (her name: Nanny), a child-development major at NYU. Mrs. X, a perfectly groomed Park Avenue princess, hires Nanny to care for four-year-old Grayer, and the girl does her best to comply with a long list of rules. The boy is rarely permitted to play inside the luxurious apartment, eat anything made with refined flour, and so forth. Mrs. X is too busy with committee work and salon treatments (and keeping an eye on her philandering husband) to do much mothering. Though Grayer is a holy terror, Nanny has a way with kids—and a family of her own to give advice when the tot falls ill. Racking cough? High fever? When Mrs. X is away at a spa and has left orders that she’s not to be disturbed for any reason, Nanny’s mother diagnoses croup. But “tragedy” strikes again: Nanny is hoping for a lavish Christmas present but all she gets is earmuffs. When she isn’t microwaving tofu snacks or teaching Grayer the intricacies of the Hokey Pokey, Nanny indulges in daydreams about the Harvard hottie she’s been flirting with in the elevator—and participates in obligatory gripe-and-gossip fests with her girlfriends. Should she tell Mrs. X about the black thong panties that Mr. X’s bitchy mistress left behind? And how about going with them to Nantucket? There’s nothing to buy there except candles and nautical trinkets, and her employers are sure to be at each other’s throats. When Nanny quits, she tells off Grayer’s indifferent parents at last, having discovered they they’ve been spying on her through a nannycam concealed in a stuffed bear.
Sometimes farcical, largely sincere—and ultimately trivial.Pub Date: March 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-27858-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
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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