The follow-up to an international best-seller starts off well but falls apart under its own best intentions.
The tumultuous life of a cat spans the equally turbulent lives of the mother and daughter who share her always-changing New York City existence.
Prudence the tabby never expected to find the right human. Living alone in a deserted construction site on the Lower East Side, she's drawn first to Sarah's singing: As a feral kitten, music is new to her. And while she quickly gets used to the idea of having a "roommate," as she puts it, Sarah's irregular lifestyle means that meals can't be counted on. When Sarah finally disappears one day, Prudence is taken in by Laura, Sarah's daughter, and her husband and trades a bohemian existence for more conventional comforts. But as the tabby learns, even life on the Upper West Side can have its ups and downs. Not only does she witness the aftereffects of Sarah and Laura's often strained relationship, she runs into danger in the form of an innocent-seeming bouquet. Initially presented in the first-person by the cat, this book by Cooper (Homer's Odyssey, 2009) achieves a matter-of-fact directness that only occasionally veers into cutesiness ("[S]ometimes Sarah eats things that are just plain gross. There's one kind of food, called 'cookies'...") But Prudence's scope is insufficient to convey the entirety of this New-York-in-the-'90s saga, and by the book's second half, human narratives begin to take over. While these are often affecting—relating the different sides of the mother–daughter struggle—they seem to come from a different book. And real-life events, notably the city-ordered demolition of a tenement with some of the occupants' pets left inside, are not convincingly woven into the narrative. The result is moving but uneven, and even a feel-good ending from the cat's viewpoint can't pull the story back together.
The follow-up to an international best-seller starts off well but falls apart under its own best intentions.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-52694-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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
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