A skillful Danielle Steel clone, filled with tragedy, crabmeat omelets, and momentous nights at the London Ritz. Pulp vet Norman (Laura, 1994, etc.) shamelessly out-Steels her apparent role model with time-tested Steel trademarks—a story about a beautiful girl who's been abused early and often; a scene of Grand Guignol childbirth; and an improbable plot carried along by so many conjunctions that the reader has no time for fruitless analysis. All the analysis here belongs to psychotherapist-hero Peter Strauss, who's searching for the key to Susanna Van Dusen, a supermodel he meets at the hospital bedside of her husband Hawke, a world-famous British photographer dying of AIDS. (He's not gay, he's just had a male lover.) After Hawke's death, Pete becomes her therapist, and as he listens to the bruising (if incredible) story of her life, he finds himself falling in love with her. The story: At 13, Susanna is kidnapped by Matthew, a handyman at the convent where she lives, is raped, and then held captive in his tar-paper shack on Cape Cod. After she gives birth, without assistance, Matthew takes the adolescent Susanna and baby Abigail to live with the Van Dusens, a wonderful family near Boston. A terrified Susanna passes the baby off as her sister. Matthew flees when he is discovered trying to molest the family's daughter, and the Van Dusens become Susanna's and Abigail's foster parents. When Susanna finally tells Abigail the whole truth about her past, Abigail goes off to investigate and is kidnapped by her father and taken to the same tar-paper shack. Matthew is killed when a twister conveniently shatters the building. But wait: Before Pete and Susanna can sever their therapeutic relationship and become lovers, Susanna has yet has another horrible story to tell (this one about her crazed mother). A page-turner—and a preposterous jaw-dropper.
Pub Date: May 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-94042-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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
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