A turgid coming-of-age saga—the second in a projected series of four novels (following If Not on Earth, Then in Heaven, 1991)- -set in rural Oregon at the turn of the century and drawn from Redon's exhaustive search into his own family's presence in that place and time. Shy hunk Vivian Cochran lives with his grandfather and doting spinster aunt in picturesque Zena, uncertain about his future as the old way of life appears to be giving way to progress. He opts to finish school so that he can go on to college like his friends, a choice made easier by the fact that Mae Matthews, the pretty young schoolteacher also living with her grandparents, is his age and attracted to him. By fits and starts a romance progresses, nearly stifled by mutual naivetÇ and miscommunication, until Mae leaves Zena to teach elsewhere and Vivian takes up football and his agricultural studies at a state college. Both miserable, the two decide it's better to live together than apart, and return to Zena to marry. Meanwhile, Vivian's grandfather, after grieving for his dead wife by loudly and imperiously reliving his Civil War and pioneer past, embraces the new age by marrying an admiring widow, and Mae's grandparents also come to terms with Zena's inevitable demise by moving to the city. In an extensive afterword, Redon charts his progress as he tracked down information about his family tree—but even though the original material has been dramatically enhanced, as an imaginative work its charms are fleeting. Colorful family history turned into a sensitive but overly precious love story—evocative in its sense of the period but tediously obsessive in detailing quirks of character.
Pub Date: June 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07791-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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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