A sometimes irreverent, sometimes poignant story of growing apart, growing together and growing up.
Sex in the City in the ’70s and beyond.
It’s 1971, and Zooey and her old-school B.F.F.’s Elizabeth, Brenna, Danielle and Patti are new students at Sanders College in California. Their somewhat wild college years are filled with ups and downs, love and laughs–you know, the kinds of things that fill most girls’ college years. After graduating, we fast-forward to 1985, when our girls have, more or less, become women, and now instead of partying, lusting and playing their respective fields, they’re navigating their way through the real world, sometimes successfully, sometimes, well…not so much. Each woman spends the ensuing decade attempting to find a balance between happiness and adulthood–two states that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive–while maintaining some semblance of an exciting romantic life. So do they make it happen? Can a woman of a certain age have it all? According to Conrad, those oft-asked questions are answered with a resounding sometimes. A prolific novelist (Baktun 2012, 2002, etc.), short story writer, essayist and children’s book writer, Conrad has a nice way with dialogue. The fact that the characters are all the same age and share similar upbringings would make it easy for all five of their voices to get mushed together, but each woman speaks sharply and distinctly. Another plus is that her male characters, particularly the enigmatic Sean, come across as three-dimensional, something that isn’t always the case in chicks-with-posses fiction. On the other hand, the lengthier expository sections and Zooey’s internal monologue have a tendency to ramble, and, at times, slow the momentum. However, there are enough sweet moments and solid set pieces throughout the book to make it an enjoyable, if not particularly memorable, read.
A sometimes irreverent, sometimes poignant story of growing apart, growing together and growing up.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-595-48314-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 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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