An incisive and highly readable novel of female friendship.
A busybody attempts to save her friend from financial ruin in Darling’s debut novel.
Can someone be too good a friend? Jane Desmond, the associate editor of a D.C.–based trade magazine for the construction-debris recycling industry, has lunch every Friday with her best friend, Thea Willis. “Whether it’s because we’ve known each other since we were kids, or because she’s just savvy that way, her instincts are spot-on,” Jane reflects. “If she weren’t my best friend I’d find it spooky, but since she is, it’s great. It’s like having a shortcut to a fabulous life.” On this particular Friday, however, it’s all bad news: Thea just lost her job and doesn’t know how she will afford the mortgage on the house she just bought. Jane immediately sets to work helping Thea find a new job—even as Thea prefers to wallow in self-pity. Thea soon tires of Jane’s mother-henning and tells her to back off. When Thea decides to take a two-week Caribbean vacation, the irresponsible decision throws Jane into overdrive, and she goes so far as to pretend to be Thea and apply for jobs. How far can Jane bend a friendship before it snaps? And why is she so much more invested in Thea’s problems than her own? Darling’s (Terms and Conditions, 2019) prose is funny and sometimes quite biting, as in this exchange in which Jane gets some tough love from her own highly intrusive mother: “ ‘Darling, you tend to lay it on a bit thick.’ ‘A bit thick?’ ‘You mean to be helpful, but sometimes you can be…too much.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know how I let you get this way.’ ‘So I’m bossy?’ ‘Not bossy, not really. Just…suffocating.’ ” Jane is constantly overstepping in a way that drives the reader crazy, and yet she is somehow affable enough to keep the audience on her side. The author does an excellent job portraying a highly believable relationship in which both parties have serious flaws and exploring the broader troubles of 30-something women when it comes to careers, money, and romance.
An incisive and highly readable novel of female friendship.Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997003-0-3
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Bricolage Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
