The Sachertorte romances by Ibbotson (Madensky Square, 1988, etc.) have resisted a firm categorization. The narration is too witty and waggish for the average lathering romance, and the plots too drenchingly sweet and contrived for a Fay Weldon-style satire or a Malcolm Macdonald chatty comedy. Here, the publishers have wisely allowed the author her own directive for her work: ``for the intelligent woman with the flu.'' Just so. Ibbotson's latest offering concerns the career of clever, enormously learned, and bouncy Ruth Berger, daughter of an eminent zoology professor and an excessively good mother whose house in Vienna also shelters an anthropologist aunt, alarmingly clumsy in all but her seminal work on obscure tribes, and a sad little uncle with a romantic past. Also, on the eve of WW II, another of the Bergers' summer visitors is Quinton Somerville, a young Englishman, a comer in paleontology, and the brilliant boy pianist Heini Radek. During the scholars' vacation in the mountains, Quin loves the Bergers, and the child Ruth adores just slightly older Heini. Eight years later, after the Nazis grab Vienna, Quin returns and, via a ``paper'' marriage to Ruth, rescues her so that she can join her family in a seedy section of London. The refugee colony makes do in tacky digs while Ruth, keeping secret the marriage to Quin, anxiously awaits the arrival of her fiancÇ Heini from Hungary. Meanwhile, she attends the college where Quin is the stellar lecturer, and with a group of students sees for the first time the Northumberland homestead where reigns Quin's fierce spinster aunt. Among Ruth's new acquaintances: dim-to-devoted schoolmates; dazed intelligentsia and an eccentric or two soldiering on; and, spearheading a sizable contingent plotting to wed Quin, a upper- caste student of terrifying perfection and the mien of a Roman senator. There will be misunderstandings, crossed paths—and, of course, happy endings. A bedtable joy.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09338-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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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