A poignant tale of a daughter strung between two parents and of the kind of silence and secrets that destroy families.
A young woman confronts her magical, tragic past when she receives a scrapbook of the summers spent with her estranged mother.
Despite working in the London art world, Beth Lowe lives a reserved life. She sees her father (a mere shadow of a man) on occasion, but hasn’t spoken to her mother in 15 years. Then a package arrives, a handmade scrapbook marked The Book of Summers. Tucked inside is a note from her mother’s longtime lover Zoltán, informing Beth that her mother has died. She grabs the album and heads to the park to recall memories she banished as a teenager. Her quiet English father and wild Hungarian mother seemed an odd pair, but 9-year-old Erzsi (the Hungarian of Elizabeth) is a happy child excited about the family vacation to Hungary, the first time Marika has been back since she escaped as a girl. But on vacation, the incomprehensible happens: Marika decides to stay and sends David and little Erzsi back home to England. Her mother’s abandonment is almost too much to take, and Erzsi pines for letters and phone calls as her home life with her father (tea and detective shows) becomes unbearably gray. But then summer comes, and Erzsi is allowed to visit her mother. Marika and artist Zoltán live in a country house dominated by art and laughter and nature—a bohemian counterpart to the lonesome domesticity of Erzsi’s English life. Down the road lives Tamás, a boy Erzsi’s age, who shows her the pool in the forest, a touchstone for her subsequent stays. Every year she returns to Marika and their Hungarian summers and falls in love anew. Hall nicely captures a girl’s adolescence, as Erzsi waits all year to bloom under the Hungarian sun, under her mother’s care. At 16 Erzsi begs her mother to let her stay in Hungary. It is then that Marika tells her the truth: It’s a heartbreaking rewriting of history.
A poignant tale of a daughter strung between two parents and of the kind of silence and secrets that destroy families.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1411-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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