Barbieri handles the complex sibling relationship with finesse, but weakens the effect with contrivance and predictability.
A first novel, set in Butte, Montana, about the love-hate relationship between two sisters, one overly responsible, the other wildly irresponsible.
Having just graduated from high school, narrator Erin lives quietly with her widowed mother, an obstetrics nurse, and works at a local vintage-clothing store whose owners (a politically correct gay couple) encourage her in her jewelry-making. Then Erin’s sister Meghan calls home in the middle of a freak July snowstorm. Or, rather, Meghan’s preschool daughter, Teeny, calls from the Pair-a-Dice Motel, where Meghan, Teeny, and baby Si-si are holed up. Since their alcoholic father died when Erin was 13, Meghan, the gifted, ambitious older sister Erin looked up to, has been on a downward spiral of sex, drugs, and Erin is afraid to think what else. Erin and her mother rescue the kids from the rattrap motel and Meghan soon follows. She takes a job at a local bakery and joins AA, Teeny and Si-si begin to thrive, and Erin wants to believe but can’t quite bring herself to trust that Meghan is back on track. In particular, she wonders about the frequent late-night hang-up calls the family’s begun receiving. In one incident after another, Erin and Meghan spar emotionally as they slowly heal old wounds. In an unnecessary subplot, Erin meets an attractive newcomer (no one seems to question an 18-year-old sleeping with a 28-year-old in this fictional world, but then Erin reads like 18 going on 48). Just as Erin is on the verge of renewed faith in Meghan, bad guys from Meghan’s past show up and start shooting. Thirty pages before it ends, the novel switches from a slow accumulation of details in minor key to a pile-up of plot and sudden revelation.
Barbieri handles the complex sibling relationship with finesse, but weakens the effect with contrivance and predictability.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-56947-384-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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