MINA

Name: MINA
Author: Jonatha Ceely
ISBN: 0-385-33690-X

by Jonatha Ceely ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 30, 2004

Long-winded and rather slow, with little by way of plot development or surprise, Ceely’s first nevertheless offers a good...

bookshelf

A young Irishwoman survives the Great Famine and a shipwreck but still dreams of escaping to America.

Ceely’s tale is based on a bundle of pages she discovered several years ago in the attic of an old upstate New York house. The result, she tells us, is Mina, “a transcription of the manuscript I found.” It’s 1848, and young “Paddy” Pigot, like all Famine refugees, has to hustle for a living in England—even to the point of changing his sex. For “Paddy” is really Mina, a young woman who passed herself off as a man in order to find work as a stablehand on a country estate. Eventually, Mina ends up working in the kitchen as an assistant to Mr. Serle, the Italian chef, but by then it’s too late to admit her ruse, and she continues as a man. She even shares a room with Mr. Serle, a kindly man who takes her under his wing and keeps quiet about the secret of her sex when she confides in him—telling him how, after their parents (like nearly everyone else in their village) died of starvation, Mina and her brother walked to Dublin and bought passage to America aboard the Abigail but were separated when the ship caught fire and sank. Mina was rescued, but her brother was taken aboard a ship bound for New York. That was when, destitute and alone, Mina cut her hair and sought work to escape the other bleak alternatives (prostitution or the poorhouse). After learning her story, Searle shares his own secret with Mina: He’s a Jew who fled Rome as a young man to escape the poverty of the ghetto. Both Searle and Mina dream of making their way to America—Mina to find her brother, Searle to open a restaurant and make his fortune. Could they, perhaps, succeed together where they failed on their own?

Long-winded and rather slow, with little by way of plot development or surprise, Ceely’s first nevertheless offers a good sketch of Victorian life with some nice historical shading.

Pub Date: March 30, 2004

ISBN: 0-385-33690-X

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

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

bookshelf

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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

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.