Heavy family angst from screenwriter DiPego (Keeper of the City, 1997), who manages to pack his latest tale with enough madness, sex, submerged resentment, and secret fears to stock several soap operas for a full season. Narrator Claude Cheever—Cheevey to us and everyone else—is right on the cusp of 20: still living with Mom and Dad, working nights at Dad's television store, looking for a girlfriend, and eager to grow up. ``I'm turning twenty in two weeks. It's a difficult maneuver . . . so much more is expected of a twenty-year old.'' Like most teenagers, Cheevey sees life as an endless procession of days in which nothing ever happens, but soon enough the wind changes with a vengeance and nearly blows the house down. Out of nowhere, Cheevey's mother announces that she's divorcing his father and moving to France—next week. His sister Mari's delusions are developing into full-fledged schizophrenia, though Cheevey's anal brother-in-law Bob refuses to take note. And Mari's friend Dash seems to want to seduce Cheevey but can't get her act together, so Cheevey seduces the considerably older Lauren (girlfriend of his of big brother Phil) instead. Throughout all of this, no one except Cheevey and Mari seems aware of what's going on, much less willing to talk about it: Cheevey is unable to convince his own brother to come to his birthday party, and his father can't even be bothered to call Mari to tell her about the divorce. As usual, a tragic and senseless death is the only thing that suffices to shake everyone out of their slumber, but here the death serves more as a convenient close of events rather than any indication of some new beginning. The Montagues and Capulets might have learned from their mistakes, but the Cheevers seem simply sad. Quickly tedious and finally shallow.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-316-18549-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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
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