A slight and airy, albeit well-meaning, volume in the Bridges of Madison County mode: spirituality in the form of palatable, sugarcoated smarm. Christine Moore is a midlife clichÇ, attempting to hide her misery behind a sarcastic and world-weary facade. With no husband, no family, an unfulfilling career as a traveling nurse, the inevitable ten pounds too many, and general dissatisfaction with her life, she moves back to the New Jersey shore from Los Angeles and takes up her old job, hoping for salvation in the familiar. When she runs into a formerly commitment-shy lover in the hospital cafeteria and notices his wedding ring, she's struck anew by her solitary state and goes off to drown her sorrows at a local pub. But a higher power has decided that the self-indulgent Christine has suffered enough: Later, after this particular ``yet another lonely night,'' she takes a walk on the beach and encounters ``Joe,'' God in the unlikely form of a hunk in black leather astride a Harley-Davidson. With scarcely a shrug of his broad shoulders, Joe (not-so-cleverly short for Joseph of Nazareth) has the convertedand love-struckChristine moving out of her soulless condo into a rustic beach cottage, letting her highlighted hair go au naturel, trading in her sexy clothes for T-shirts and jeans, and living effortlessly by the six personalized commandments he has set for her. By the time Christine rides off into the sunset on still another Harley, driven this time by a saxophone-playing Joe look- alike, her view of men as Milky Ways comes to mind in a larger context: ``...sweet at first,'' she says, ``but detrimental in the end.'' Christine's newfound confidence notwithstanding, just another Cinderella story.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-53621-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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
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