Should have an emotional weight and impact, but Goldstein’s first fails to move.
A feisty grandmother and Holocaust survivor takes charge of her suicidal grandchild.
Twentysomething Jennifer, found unconscious on the beach in Venice, California, is rushed to the hospital; when she wakes up, she finds that her nana, Gabby, has flown from New York to be by her side. Jennifer’s boyfriend, we learn, had asked her to move out, and as a result she’d taken what she hoped was a lethal dose of Xanax and alcohol. No one seemed to care about her: her father, with a new wife and baby, wasn’t interested in her; and her mother had been killed in an accident on the way to Jennifer’s high school graduation. As for Gabby, her lungs are shot from smoking—she’s got bad emphysema—but she loves life and is determined to find good where she can. Haunted by her own past—she saw her parents and sister killed by the Nazis, went into hiding in a brave Polish woman’s attic and, when betrayed, was saved by partisans—she is the more determined to ensure that Jennifer has a future. After persuading Jennifer’s doctors—and her father, a Hollywood producer—that she can take care of the girl in New York and bring her back to health, the two fly east and Jennifer, reluctantly, moves in with Gabby. Initially, Jennifer resists help, but Gabby, despite her frail health, plans activities she hopes will cheer Jennifer: they clean stables, attend plays, walk in Central Park. Jennifer is still depressed and hasn’t abandoned the idea of suicide, but Gabby has her own survival stratagems, including a car trip to Bar Harbor, Maine, a place that has long held special meaning for her. There, though her own health deteriorates, she makes a final pitch for Jennifer’s life.
Should have an emotional weight and impact, but Goldstein’s first fails to move.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2004
ISBN: 1-4013-0110-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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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