Cooper (The Matter Is Life, 1991, etc.) relates this meandering tale of two half-sisters in a folksy, dialect-strewn voice that is moralistic—and also pretty dull. In the small town of Yoville, a newly emancipated slave named Josephus Josephus chooses to remain for a spell on the plantation of his former masters, the Krupts, while he plans his next move. While there, he courts a neighboring woman, who then marries a different man but gives birth to Ruth, who Josephus is convinced is his daughter: ``He just watched the child as she grew for signs that she might be his. He saw them and knew she was his child.'' Shortly afterward, the disgusting, drunken Mrs. Krupt commands Josephus to have sex with her and becomes pregnant, eventually giving birth to a daughter named Yinyang. After Yinyang discovers her mother's hidden stash of gold, Josephus steals it and buries half in the ground, then Josephus and Yinyang leave together and he dies shortly afterward, but not before giving her some gold coins. Back in Yoville, Ruth discovers the buried treasure, marries the love of her life, and starts having children. Meanwhile, after a stint in New Orleans living with a woman who showers her with gifts and ``loans'' her to a priest, grown-up Yinyang returns to Yoville. The story flips back and forth between Ruth and Yinyang (and, after Ruth's death, between her daughter Hosanna and Yinyang) with dizzying speed, as if to force home the good girl/bad girl dichotomy. More irritating are the constant references to Satan's feelings about things (``Satan smiled in amusement. `I will be there with some suggestions to make, little one.' '') and the authorial instructions on clean living (``You just watch those Ten Commandments and watch out for people who do not respect and try to do them''). Imitative of but in no way equal to Zora Neale Hurston. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-46785-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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