A pleasant read, rich in cultural ethos, but with little character depth.
Townsend’s (Reel Life, 2012) second novel presents a portrait of two clashing cultures, embodied in the relationship between a career-minded American woman and a conflicted Italian man.
The novel depicts the tried-and-true themes of the New versus Old World, and pragmatism versus romance, through its main characters: Jamie, a driven woman who has found success in a man’s world, and Jack, her Italian lover who is torn between his American business and his family’s legacy. Jamie is a child of divorce, dogmatically anti-marriage and single-minded in her professional quest. Jack’s character is more interesting: Pressured to achieve success in America, he’s a beacon of hope for his bankrupt, haunted Italian family. However, his heart is in the old Italian ways, and he can’t escape his attachment to his family’s antiquated wine business. The opening chapters are set in Italy, where Jack brings Jamie as his date to his brother’s wedding; from the beginning, readers get a visceral look at Jack’s struggle to reconcile his feelings for his family with his life in America. The flowing prose is polished, but too easily glosses over moments that could offer more emotional heft. For example, readers experience Jamie’s attraction to Jack, but never his attraction to her, thus obscuring one of the driving forces of Jack’s character: his love for Jamie. Indeed, the third-person narration stays very close to Jamie throughout, but never reveals as much about her thoughts some readers might expect. Jamie is so emotionally blocked that without objective insight into her inner conflict readers may find her one-dimensional and unsympathetic.
A pleasant read, rich in cultural ethos, but with little character depth.Pub Date: May 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0983791522
Page Count: 387
Publisher: Ripetta Press
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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