Not Sullivan’s best.
In a disappointingly maudlin story, three women shaped by past sadness confront the possibilities of hope over three momentous days.
Sullivan revisits the small town of Harvester, Minnesota (The Empress of One, 1996, etc.), where memories are long and everybody knows your business. The time is summer, the year 1952, and the day Wednesday—the tenth anniversary of the fatal car crash of Archer and Celia Canby. The couple left a small daughter Bess, now 17; and she, her great-aunt Kate, and her middle-aged cousin Harriet are the three narrators. Kate, afflicted by painful arthritis, can't forgive Archer, a drunk and abusive man, for causing Celia's death. And lately, too, she can’t stop remembering the happy times she spent when she and her own late husband Martin still owned the farm outside Harvester, before they had to sell it back during the Depression. Bess, on the other hand, soon to go off to college, is full of life and eager to fall in love, which she does that same Wednesday night when she goes dancing with friend Donna and meets married Korean War vet Doyle Hanlon. Cousin Harriet is also out dancing the same night, hoping that widower farmer DeVore will finally propose to her and allow her to live the life she has dreamed of since moving away from her cold and critical parents. As Harriet's wishes come true, Kate, who has caught a glimpse of Bess riding in a strange car, worries that the girl may be harmed, as her mother was, by falling for the wrong kind of man. Bess, convinced that she's in love with Doyle, is soon ready to give up college and become his mistress, even if it might cause a scandal and deeply wound Kate and Harriet. All too neatly, however, a broken-down car and sudden death resolve matters for all three of these women, who, however well drawn, remain stuck in a pulp-fiction world.
Not Sullivan’s best.Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50390-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
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
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