An often involving story that memorably explores multiple social issues.
English teacher Krill addresses engaging what-if questions about parenthood in her debut novella.
Elizabeth and Andrew conceive their children via in vitro fertilization due to a spinal cord injury that Andrew received as a teenager. After their two children, Michelle and Stephen, are born, the couple faces the decision of what to do with the 10 remaining, unused embryos. Elizabeth is eager to help other couples with fertility issues, but Andrew, due in part to his unspoken homophobia, has reservations about adoption; nonetheless, they make the embryos available to others, with the option to contact them in case of medical necessity. Nearly two decades later, fissures in Elizabeth and Andrew’s seemingly perfect family appear as Michelle and Stephen exhibit troublesome adolescent behavior. Meanwhile, a few hours away, teenage twins Brian and Caroline have good relationships with their lesbian mothers, but athlete Caroline is puzzled by recurring headaches and fatigue. Later, Stephen finds a letter from a social worker requesting permission to give the family’s contact information to the mothers of biological siblings that he never knew he had. Caroline’s health crisis, and the desire of Elizabeth, Michelle, and Stephen to assist her, forces the families to confront repressed issues; in the process, Andrew reveals long-kept secrets about his youth and how he acquired his injury. Beautifully told and deeply affecting, this novella personifies an ethical issue in very simple terms. It uses the alternating points of view of significant characters to give them depth, and each of them is engaging in his or her own ways. Only Jessie and Allison, Brian and Caroline’s mothers, are less well-developed. The depiction of Andrew’s complex feelings prevents him from being wholly unsympathetic. However, the meaning of the author’s repeated references to “old souls” may not be entirely clear to all readers.
An often involving story that memorably explores multiple social issues.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-5905-6
Page Count: 190
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2015
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
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