Many of the Elm Creek novels provide appealing and original characters set within enjoyable plots, but this feels recycled...
This latest installment of the Elm Creek Quilts novels is a stale companion piece to 2005’s The Christmas Quilt.
It’s just days after the Christmas Eve marriage of Sylvia and Andrew, and the two are driving from their home at Elm Creek Manor (Sylvia’s family home now turned into a prestigious retreat for quilters) to visit Andrew’s daughter Amy. The wedding was a surprise to the Elm Creek community, but the two have yet to tell Amy, who is adamant that Andrew and Sylvia are too old to marry. While driving from Pennsylvania to Hartford (with a couple of days in Manhattan in between), Sylvia works on a New Year’s Resolution quilt as a gift for Amy, and considers past resolutions she’s made and broken, and the lessons learned. Sylvia recalls the warmth of the holiday season of her childhood, with the women of the family sewing, cooking and laughing, and also remembers the contentious relationship with her older sister Claudia (the pair’s strained relationship grew to its breaking point over a perceived betrayal, which kept Sylvia stubbornly away from Elm Creek for 50 years). The first holiday after her mother died, the deprivations of the Depression, the tragedy of her husband’s death during World War II, the genuine sisterhood of quilting—all these episodes were touched on in The Christmas Quilt and are expanded on here, though little new insight is added. When Andrew and Sylvia arrive in Hartford they are given the icy reception they expect, though after a few heartfelt talks, all is right in Elm Creek country.
Many of the Elm Creek novels provide appealing and original characters set within enjoyable plots, but this feels recycled and written on autopilot.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4755-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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
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
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