Images gutter in candleflame or rise in snowlight through smeared windowpanes in storytelling so quiet that, in Middleton's...
A magically rich fictionalizing of the lives of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, interwoven with a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, by a prolific children’s and adult author (The Collapsing Castle, 1991, etc.).
Middleton, an expert on Celtic myth, loves opalescent fantasy and sensuous realism. The first of three parallel stories here is the sentimental journey of Professor Jacob Grimm in his last year of life (at 78) to his childhood home in 1863. Jacob, who first wrote down the tales later prettified by Wilhelm, knows every roadside plant and tree he hasn't seen since his teens. Clearly a linguistic genius, he is assembling a vast set of books that gather together every word in the German language (a project completed by others in 1954). He recalls his childhood home life with Mother Grimm and little Wilhelm, and Mother's delight in hair-raising fairy tales, self-slain families, and suicides. The story of Sleeping Beauty emerges when Old One, the eldest child of an overly prolific mother, is cast out and told henceforth to call himself a prince and to present himself at the palace of the Rose King beyond the forest. But first, of course, he must go through the teasingly erotic, feathery, Edenic woods to get there. Back in 1863, Jacob has been joined by his late brother's daughter Auguste, now 31 (and destined to die a spinster in 1919), who wants to get family secrets out of her close-mouthed uncle. Helping them is the young manservant Kummel, whose life hides secrets of its own. The three stories play against a background of small states in Germany soon to join into the Reich that Bismarck will found on blood and iron.
Images gutter in candleflame or rise in snowlight through smeared windowpanes in storytelling so quiet that, in Middleton's words, "you can hear a heart-string snap": a modern fairy tale that should last at least a hundred years.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-27290-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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