A heartbreaking and exquisite story about emotional violence.
A novel traces a forlorn woman’s romantic and artistic journey.
Angela Dunnewald barely keeps it together as a lonely housewife in a wealthy New England suburb. Her daily interactions are typically limited to lunch with Lydia, the larger-than-life socialite who has taken an inexplicable liking to Angela, and brief exchanges with Ina, her stern housekeeper. Angela’s husband, Ross, is often absent and reliably self-absorbed and spiteful when he is home: “Once, when he’d broken a teacup...he’d blamed the table, saying it was too small.” Everything changes when a mysterious stranger starts lurking outside the house. Sensing a kindred spirit, Angela eventually invites him in. Daniel is an itinerant carpenter from a broken home: quiet, gentle, good, and everything Ross is not. Daniel starts visiting regularly, and Angela lives vicariously through imagining his life apart from her. She falls in love with him, enjoying “the sense he gives her that she’s not spinning alone through the dark.” The affair empowers her to think beyond the colorless existence she’s been leading. She enrolls in a local art class and renovates the garden shed, turning it into a studio where she finally feels some sense of purpose. She retreats from Ross and Lydia, but upon discovering that Daniel may be hiding more than just their affair, that relationship, too, threatens to unravel. The novel boasts some stunning turns of phrase bridging Angela’s thoughts and reality. In describing Daniel: “He’s some lean-flanked, fine-boned thing. A deer. Or a wolf. Her mind is caught up in entanglements, people and animals coupling in strange ways, swans, she sees swans, and satyrs.” No moment feels wasted under Legters’ (Connected Underneath, 2016) keen, observant eye. When Angela and Ross attend yet another expensive, stuffy dinner, an oversized menu is “the size of an airplane wing,” and fellow diners wear blank faces “like those huge sunflowers.” All the while, Angela’s frustration that she hasn’t made the most of her life and her path toward self-acceptance ring true in this painfully beautiful tale. Fans of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road (1961) rejoice.
A heartbreaking and exquisite story about emotional violence.Pub Date: May 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59021-647-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
