Vintage Trollope, fluidly and accessibly written as always, now with an American twist.
The prolific Trollope (Next of Kin, 2001, etc.) spins another engaging tale about life‘s twists and turns, occasioned as much by character as circumstance, and the ways family ties both help and hinder.
Since college, art historian Gillon Stokes has alternately fled and returned to Charleston, South Carolina, drawn by love for her relatives but finding them constraining once she’s actually there. When she learns that sister Ashley is pregnant, Gillon decides to leave Charleston again and accept a temporary art conservation job in London so she can avoid perfect Ashley’s sure-to-be-perfect pregnancy. Meanwhile in London, photographer Henry Atkins, in a professional rut, feels ambivalent about live-in girlfriend Tilly’s assertion that it’s time for a commitment. After Gillon moves into a spare room in the apartment he and journalist Tilly share, he’s only too happy to accept her casual invitation to visit her family in Charleston. The Stokeses are Old Charleston, with all the privileges and baggage that position entails, and Henry falls in love with the family, the city, and Gillon. Back for Ashley’s delivery, Gillon is troubled by his uncritical acceptance of her kin and her own betrayal of Tilly, who treated her kindly. While our American heroine learns more about her inability ever to leave home completely (“There’s nowhere else that I feel so vulnerable. And because of that, so alive”), English Tilly also examines her life. Realizing that Henry’s not coming back, she becomes closer to her divorced mother, appreciating the matter-of -fact-comfort that Margot offers. The author deftly sketches her characters’ situations with her usual hardheaded but empathetic understanding of the way the world works for men and women.
Vintage Trollope, fluidly and accessibly written as always, now with an American twist.Pub Date: June 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03097-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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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