From Bennett (My Father's Geisha, 1990): a slackly plotted chronicle of an endless family car trip—at times enlivened by the appealing voices and quirky viewpoints of the kids. The year is 1969, and 14-year-old Teddy, the narrator, is traveling with his mother Rosemary and his 16-year-old sister, Cora, from Massachusetts to California, where Rosemary plans to ship out with her children for Taiwan. Also along for the cross- country ride is cousin Bobbie, taking a break from a bad marriage. Rosemary intends for the family to be reunited with their husband and father, a career Army officer stationed in Taipei; she fantasizes about a perfect family life and a return to the romance she once had with her husband. Teddy longs to be with his father but fears that, with his epilepsy and his introspective nature, he will always be a disappointing son. Acerbic Cora predicts the blissful reunion is never going to happen: she believes that her father likes the distance from his family so that he can have girlfriends. And Bobbie has her own concerns: early on in the trip she learns she's pregnant, yet she doesn't know whether she'll go back to her loutish husband. The miles unwind with predictable discomforts: frayed tempers, carsickness, lost luggage—and some unpredictable ones: a robbery, and a few epileptic seizures. In Pennsylvania, Cora beguiles an Amish boy into secretly following her in his silver T-bird all the way to Texas. There, fed up with her mother, she goes off with him. Meanwhile, Bobbie finds romance with an Elvis impersonator...Rosemary is coming unhappily closer to the truth about her marriage...and Teddy is distracting himself from the tedium and anxiety by reading a book about Matt Henson, the black manservant of South Pole explorer Admiral Peary, who, though shabbily treated by Peary, still felt for him the same groundless devotion that, the reader gathers, Teddy feels for his father.... Are we there yet?
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47095-9
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
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
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