PIPER

Name: PIPER
Author: John E. Keegan
ISBN: 1-57962-029-9

by John E. Keegan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2001

Keegan covered similar ground last time (Clearwater Summer, 1996), but this soapy plot has a lot less to recommend it. Piper...

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Piper Scanlon, 15, is obnoxious, homely—and shattered by her mother’s sudden, violent death.

Kathryn Scanlon drowned in a hot tub when her long hair caught in the drain, half-scalping her (the adolescent narrator spares none of the gruesome details). But she wasn’t at home. The hot tub belonged to her husband’s boss, John Carlisle, owner of the local newspaper and scion of a distinguished family, whose roots go back to pioneer days in Washington State. Tom Scanlon, a likable failure and writer for the newspaper, worships John and refuses to believe that his charming, willful wife could have been having an affair with the man. But Piper doesn’t refuse. She’s wondered about her mother anyway, particularly since she’s always known she was adopted. Kathryn was rebellious by nature, an artist of sorts, and it was she who, years ago, persuaded her new husband to remain in her small hometown, and then never forgave him for his lack of ambition. Piper, musing over her mother’s behavior and the hypocrisy of adults in general, shocks the town by shaving her head, helps her eccentric granddad out with his pack of good-for-nothing dogs, and sulks—until a new scandal breaks. John Carlisle is accused of sodomizing several young boys. Though Piper and Tom don’t believe it, everyone else does. But Piper has better things to care about—especially when she discovers who her real father is and just how close he’s been all these years.

Keegan covered similar ground last time (Clearwater Summer, 1996), but this soapy plot has a lot less to recommend it. Piper is no Holden Caulfield, mostly because she talks and thinks more like a 50-ish male writer than a teenaged girl. And Keegan’s straightforward style and energy aren’t enough to make his masquerade work.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-57962-029-9

Page Count: 287

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.