Colegate’s first to be published here in almost a decade (The Summer of the Royal Visit, 1992, etc.): sharp-eyed yet...
A small, quite wonderful story about manners and morals and the different kinds of love: Colgate's best since The Shooting Party (1981).
When Edith Ashby drives down from London to visit her younger brother, now in his 50s, the January weather is bleak as usual, but the rather forbidding farmhouse in which both grew up seems inordinately welcoming. And so does Alfred. Actually, that’s no surprise. It’s been a while, and though they disagree about virtually everything, the fact is they love each other. Brisk, efficient Edith, a stranger to indecision, objects to Alfred’s laid-back lifestyle, what she considers his undue passivity. Yes, he’s a well-known photographer, but what’s that really? You point and click. It’s not art, after all, despite the hyperbole. Meanwhile, what Alfred objects to is Edith’s immoderate energy. She keeps wanting to make things happen, to change things—thanks precisely to that part of her personality that got her elected to the House of Commons, an accomplishment he’s prouder of than she is. Still, he hates being the focus of her attention. There's minimal story here, but, nevertheless, during Edith’s short stay much is revealed about these two siblings. Points of view shift effortlessly—with Edith and Alfred traveling back and forth in time—as we learn about Edith’s two marriages, both troubled, though considerably at variance; about Alfred’s love affair, passionate, poignant, permanently wounding; about their parents, a relationship in which discord was nonexistent, as if by fiat. And about England—specifically, its 60 years of transition from a great power to a nation reinventing itself in the hope of becoming viable.
Colegate’s first to be published here in almost a decade (The Summer of the Royal Visit, 1992, etc.): sharp-eyed yet warm-hearted, unfailingly witty, impeccably written.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58243-122-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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
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