The perils of money—both too much and too little—are well detailed in this debut novel about a couple who live in an ancient English country house and try to avoid financial ruin by selling a collection of souvenir mugs to a rich American. Little Waitling Hall, parts of which were built in the 1400s, is in danger of collapsing into the muddy moat that surrounds it. The occupants, Fliss and Ivor Harley-Wright, do their best to maintain the place, with no help from Ivor’s eccentric mother, Martita, but by 1987, despite their best efforts’sheep farming, Fliss’s handmade pottery, and dried flowers” they—re heavily in debt. Their only hope is to sell the mugs collected by Ivor’s father, some dating from the 17th century, to American billionaire Constantine Ziminovski. Mr. Z sends Tom Klaus, an ambitious and recently divorced lawyer who dreams of becoming super-rich, to finalize the negotiation. Fliss and Ivor do their best to make a good impression when Klaus arrives to inspect the collection. Fliss borrows bed linen, they spend overdraft money to purchase oil for the old furnace and try to spruce up the house. But the visit doesn’t go well: Martita hints at legal conditions that would affect the sale, the furnace stops working, and Fliss has to deal with a drunk and amorous Klaus. Against Klaus’s advice, Mr. Z. buys the mugs, pays half in advance, and invites Fliss to visit New York to get the rest of the money. Meanwhile, though, Mr.Z. and Klaus are arrested for fraud, and the check bounces. Fliss and Ivor survive as new projects prove more fruitful, and Fliss realizes, as the early “90s recession affects once rich friends, that “there’s always something in life to keep your mind churning in the darkest of the night, if you let it.” An unpretentious comedy of manners with an agreeably lower-case lesson about life.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20887-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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
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