From the inventive, darkly acerbic, cunningly erotic Diski (Monkey’s Uncle, 1995; an acclaimed memoir, Skating to Antarctica, 1998; etc.) comes this story of the chance encounter of a mother and daughter, long apart, who pass mutually unrecognized but are nonetheless affected by what transpires. Mimi, having fallen asleep in a London cinema to the outrage of her lover (who takes the dozing—as intended—as a reflection on himself), walks out on the guy, only to come across a comatose bag lady by the theater’s rear exit. After an ambulance whisks the old girl away, Mimi goes home to bed, speculating on what has just happened while awaiting the death of her relationship, which occurs later that same night. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the bag lady, named Bella by the EMT’s, is being cleaned before treatment. Imagining, in her unconscious state, that she’s been stripped to her very organs, she searches for clues to her identity. She fancies she’s faceless, the victim of a terrorist’s bomb, but saved by a man who’s in love with her—because, without her face, he could imagine the face he always had loved. In truth, though, she’s Mimi’s mother, Leah, who, abandoned by her husband, in turn abandoned her child. Converting from Judaism to Catholicism, becoming a nun even while remaining an atheist, Leah had to give it up when her aloofness proved untenable. So she plummeted into life as a welfare case, was dismissed as half-mad—but finally (and miraculously) seemed to heal a neighbor’s dying child, then took to the streets in shock. After many years, a coincidental meeting with that child, now an addict who’s half mad himself, brought her to the state in which Mimi discovered her. An elaborate tale, finding humor in the odd corners created when what’s real and what isn’t converge: a story that both disturbs and delights.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1999
ISBN: 0-88001-611-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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