Berkowitz, a contributor to Vogue, Playboy, and Glamour, debuts with this particularly busy and crowded story of baby- boom-era female friends seeking to find themselves in men and work. Erica Valenta, the daughter of a pair of hard-working but limited Czech immigrants, gets herself out of Brooklyn by earning a scholarship to Radcliffe. There, alas, she lands in emotional hot water when she drops out to marry a handsome Boston Brahmin, who secretly sees her as his ``gutter girl.'' But her meeting with Melissa John, a model at Goldsmith's Bridal Salon in New York, proves fortuitous, since the two of them strike up a lifelong friendship. While Erica is consumed by work (rising to a top position in an international chemicals firm), gorgeous Melissa heads off to L.A. on a quest of her own—this one for fame and fortune as a movie star—which will entail deluding herself about men and her own desire to feel needed. Meanwhile, another one of their pals is ethereal little Earline Prewitt from Arkansas, who follows her boyfriend to New York only to have him force her into prostitution; ironically, she winds up as Goldsmith's most virginal-looking bridal-gown model. Of course, there's a happy ending in store for one and all: a Belgian diplomat who's head over heels in love with Earline; a freewheeling entrepreneur from California for Erica; and a Down's syndrome baby for Melissa, which she's able to love, accept, and feel fulfilled by. Clearly, there are no new twists on the pot-of-gold-at-the- end-of-the-rainbow formula here, but Berkowitz creates several credible female characters whose searches for self-satisfaction will ring some familiar bells—and keep readers bending back the novel's covers.
Pub Date: June 20, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-05827-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
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
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