A balance of suspense and science makes for a memorable ghost tale.
Exploring the dark history of America’s eugenics movement, Picoult (Perfect Match, 2002, etc.) sneaks in a ghost story in her eighth outing: a gratifying blend of gothic melodrama and social critique.
Ross Wakeman remains implausibly unscathed after every suicide attempt, preventing him from a desired reunion with his dead fiancée. Having quit his job filming for a television ghost hunter, he takes refuge at his sister Shelby’s in small-town Vermont, where, as luck would have it, his expertise as a ghost hunter is needed: Dying Spencer Pike has finally agreed to sell his house, but now that a developer is ready to build a strip mall, the local Abenaki tribe is claiming the land as a burial ground. The Abenaki protestors, including 102-year-old Az Thompson, have no evidence for their claim, but the developer hires Ross to see whether there really is anything to the strange goings-on in town: rose petals falling from the sky, cars driving only in reverse, robins’ eggs found under pillows, pennies minted in 1931 landing in everyone’s pockets. Ross meets Lia in his investigation, a strange young woman he begins to fall for until he realizes she’s none other than Cecilia Pike, Spencer’s young bride, murdered in 1931. Things shift temporarily to Lia’s story and the tragic account of American eugenics. A young Spencer Pike spearheaded the cleansing of his town, sterilizing the local “gypsies,” the Abenaki, unable to acknowledge how close his own pregnant wife (suicidal and a half-breed) is to those he’s trying to erase. In the present again, Shelby falls in love with the town cop, who is also newly interested in the old case; Shelby’s son Ethan, suffering from a rare genetic disease, begins to test the bounds of his mortality; Meredith, a genetic counselor, is frantic about her daughter’s seeing ghosts; Ross believes Meredith and Lia to be one and the same; and old Az Thompson seems to be holding the key to everything.
A balance of suspense and science makes for a memorable ghost tale.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-5450-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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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