Sheehan uses her skills as both a psychologist and a writer to create a solid, insightful story that will leave fans eagerly...
Surrounded by her Peaks Island friends, widow Rocky Pelligrino’s emotional journey continues in Sheehan’s sequel to Lost & Found (2007).
Rocky, a psychotherapist, has settled comfortably into a rental house on Peaks Island, off Portland, Maine, with her beloved black lab, Cooper. Her husband Bob's sudden death just 15 months earlier shook her entire world, but her stay on the island has given Rocky some much-needed time to adjust to and reflect on the changes that have occurred. Although she is working as a game warden and enjoys her new job, Rocky must face a difficult decision: Should she stay on the island or return to her counseling job at a university on the mainland? Rocky has forged close friendships with several of the locals in this special close-knit community, including Tess, an elderly physical therapist and rental property manager; her boss, Isaiah; and Melissa, a teenager who struggles with anorexia and is completely devoted to Cooper and Rocky. Still in the throes of trying to redefine her life, Rocky even has begun to take the first steps toward falling in love again with Hill, her archery instructor. Then two events occur that help Rocky decide. She buys an old house that she feels a strong connection to and makes plans to renovate, and she receives a phone call from Natalie, an 18-year-old girl who is searching for her biological father. In Natalie, Rocky discovers a troubled and secretive person, the product of an abusive foster care system. Rocky’s empathetic nature and background as a therapist compel her to help Natalie, and she invites her to stay with her on the island while Natalie searches for a job. As her guest settles into the daily life on Peaks Island, Rocky is determined to heal Natalie’s wounds as well as her own and to uncover the truth about her young visitor’s origins.
Sheehan uses her skills as both a psychologist and a writer to create a solid, insightful story that will leave fans eagerly awaiting another visit from the strong heroine, her dog and her friends.Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-200812-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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