by Helen Scully ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2004
Little connects, and the pretentious prose is as enervating as the climate.
Improbable plot makes for a disappointing debut about a once-grand southern family who loses almost everything in the Depression but somehow keeps going.
The beginning is promising as Louisiana-born Colonel Riant, back from the Civil War, moves to Mobile, Alabama, where he marries wealthy Regina. This first Regina—there are two others—is soon felled by yellow fever, and the grieving Colonel (the most credible character here) devotes himself to good works, business ventures, and running the city’s only newspaper. Fifteen years later, he marries again—another Regina—in what is for both a marriage of convenience: he needs a family, she needs money. Regina Two, not the warmest of women, has four sons whom she spoils rotten, then a daughter—Regina Three—who becomes the protagonist of the novel, which is like one of those dreams where people inexplicably appear, then just as inexplicably disappear in disconnected scenes. When Regina is 17, in 1915, she falls in love with visiting Chinese Ahlong, a college friend of one her brothers. Ahlong proposes marriage, and the family gives it their blessing—stretching credibility, given the racial prejudice of the era—but Regina feels obliged to stay home and take care of the Colonel, so exit Ahlong. In 1919, she abruptly marries Charles Morrow, who is ambitious but increasingly unstable, and moves with him to his remote timber plantation. Then just as suddenly they’re back again with the Riants in Mobile, where Regina now has three children and the eldest dies of leukemia. Charles fatally shoots himself while drunk, and Regina’s brothers do little but spend money before suddenly marrying after years of bachelorhood, a decision compelling them finally to seek employment. Regina struggles to survive the Depression and is saved emotionally by a surprise visit from a relative—and, financially, by an unexpected windfall.
Little connects, and the pretentious prose is as enervating as the climate.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59420-025-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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