Perhaps appealing to certain hip, stricken readers, but not to the many.
The author of Hungry (stories: 1998) offers a listless first novel, an intimate, often claustrophobic-feeling fictional memoir about the death of a father, the lives of two edgy sisters, and their happily liberated dancing mother.
“My father is going to die today,” solemnly begins chin-up, clear-eyed daughter Alice. Now in her late 30s, Alice is visiting her New England family home to witness the death, coming at the end of a long coma. Childhood memories of growing up under a strangely will-starved, elusive teetotaling father come crowding in vivid flashback; then, after Alice and her sister Gwen, a hairdresser and party girl, cope with the death by going out and getting trashed with the home-care nurse, the sisters and their mother return to separate and lonely lives, each armed with strategies for muddling through—and with portions of the deceased’s ashes. Alice forsakes a comfortable boyfriend and a floating, futureless work schedule for salsa lessons; Gwen abruptly stops drinking, while the mother, who is English and a fan of ballroom dancing—though her husband never shared her enthusiasm, not even at their wedding—takes up with the next-door neighbor and enters dance competitions. In the meantime, no one claims to have loved their curiously bland husband or father, nor do they wonder what kind of life he may really have led. Torrey’s observations, however stark and pungent, labor under a kind of writerly feeling of being heavily orchestrated; and there is little action or suspense (except on the dance floor) to help impel things forward. Instead, portentous doses of sentimentalism seem intended to keep spirits sunk, as if the reader, like the mother, is expected to awaken from the deep sleep imposed by this joyless father three decades before.
Perhaps appealing to certain hip, stricken readers, but not to the many.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60123-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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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