An affecting if uneven debut.
Emotional courtroom drama explores the lingering psycological and social effects of the Jim Crow South.
For 35 years, Josup Noble, an African-American convicted of killing a white boy, has preferred to languish in a Georgia state prison rather than subject his family to the scrutiny that a second trial would require. For 35 years, his daughter Gilly has worked for his release, launching an impressive law career and lining up powerful allies in order to build a solid case. While her desire for invulnerability has won her education, connections and power, it has also fueled her escalating alcoholism. The author articulates the most damaging effects–a preference for fantasy over reality and a need to push others away–persuasively and without fanfare. After a mawkish, turgid opening visit between father and daughter, Taylor’s debut, though riddled with spelling and punctuation hiccups, moves with unexpected freshness through the events leading to Noble’s second trial. A pro bono case Gilly takes for a family friend leads her to a long-lost wayward brother, whose trial and execution both draws Gilly’s extended family together and pushes her to reveal the secret that will set her father–and herself–free. In her focus on the love between adult children and parents and on interracial love and rape, in her skillful release of a series of family revelations, and in her nimble movement through the strata of contemporary African-American life, the author covers much the same ground as Alice Randall in her recent Pushkin and the Queen of Spades (2004). Taylor, however, offers punchier dialogue and more suspense, albeit amidst less accomplished prose.
An affecting if uneven debut.Pub Date: May 31, 2005
ISBN: 1-58736-464-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2011
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
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