Not dependent on the award-winning Chronicle (1958), this continues the picaresque experiences of the surviving members of the family, Miss Honora, Coverly and Moses; whose egregious eccentricity was a more prominent feature of the earlier took. While this approach also is a little off center, it is more awry than askew. Miss Honora, indomitable at 70, represents the "surprising abundance of life" but life itself is unaccountable, a "migration" full of random irrelevancies. But there's more to it than just a tilted perspective— Cheever seems to be haunted by what one critic called the "everpresent danger and the half-felt queerness of contemporary existence". Although there may be some escape through the hot certainties of the flesh, there are still the dusty answers— "no cure for autumn, no medicine for the north wind"; loneliness is a constant presence, death an occasional one, and above all there's a certain uneasiness with the world as it is. Less so for Honora whose ancien regime has had a fixed, autocratic authority. But Coverly has gone from the very old to the very new- a missile base with its "promethean powers" and menace. And he is saddened by his failure to bring happiness to Betsy. Moses is still more troubled; his Melissa runs off with a young boy, then to Italy, and leaves him with only the sodden solace of the ottle. The current chronology closes with a farewell to St. Botolph's and Honora.... heever, like Updike, is a loner in modern fiction; sui generis, he is also a special taste. But his admirers will again be fascinated by this new book, unstructured as it may be, with its passionate sense of life, its disconsolate awareness of loss, and its writing, much of which is remarkable, and, a word to be used charily, beautiful.
Pub Date: Jan. 3, 1963
ISBN: 0060528885
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1963
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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