A well-crafted but narratively undercooked story of life in California's Central Valley during the three decades following WW I. Finney, as in his previous fiction with California settings (Flights in the Heavenlies, 1996, etc.), deftly evokes both time and place with appropriately vivid descriptions—e.g., the way raisins are made and strawberries picked—but the story told here by his various and sundry characters is more like a motley collection of sketches than a full rural saga. It begins in 1928, when the wounded sailor Peter Hart arrives in the Valley to manage the town's hotel, and it ends in Italy during WW II as Julian, a young Italian American reared in the Valley, now a war hero and embryonic journalist, changes his mind about going AWOL and decides to return home, sickened by the pointless carnage. In between these tales fits another about three families—the Portuguese Brazils, the Italian Palestinis, and the Japanese Hamadas—and their relations with one another and the locals in changing times. Their story is told by a range of voices, including that of Hortense Brazil, who has admired Julian since they first rode the school bus together; schoolmate Grayson Hamada, whose elder sister Reiko is Hortense's best friend; and Fred, an orphan from ``dust bowl Oklahoma'' who is helped by Peter and soon falls for Reiko. The action takes in hunts in the mountains for bear and deer, organized by Ray, Reiko, and Grayson Hamada's irrepressible grandfather; the sharing of labor at harvest time; the travail of the Depression; and farming setbacks and triumphs. Also dealt with is the outbreak of war. The Hamadas are summarily put in a remote camp in Arizona, and Reiko and Fred's love is destroyed by her rage at her family's internment. Nice vignettes, but little more.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87417-311-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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