Leisurely paced and earnestly revealing, this proper, well-proportioned book memorializes the Yardleys, the author's own family, re-creating the family history by drawing on personal memory and the extensive contents of a file his parents kept for 50 years. Yardley's father Bill was a girls' school headmaster who studied for the ministry to further his academic career; crusty, disciplined, and well-mannered, he had aristocratic pretensions but also cared deeply about books and the girls of Chatham Hall. Helen, the author's mother, was in Bennington's first graduating class; marrying soon after, she apparently shelved plans for an art career to become the headmaster's wife and raise four children, acknowledging some bitterness over the choice only late in life. The two shared a love of fine things—some pieces of furniture seem like beloved members of the family—and a continuing recognition of their silver-plated circumstances: never having quite enough money, beholden to people who had much more. Yardley justly likens them, especially his father's clan, to "characters from a Marquand novel," for in their aspirations and pretenses, their coded public behaviors and more relaxed private styles, their strongly expressed convictions and old prejudices, they indeed resemble that novelist's genteel WASP creations. Appreciating the subtleties and contradictions in their personalities, Yardley is able to separate small posturings and tiresome quirks from true qualities of character, all the while remembering his own unique position here—an insider trading on family stock. Traces of his varied legacy are apparent in his handling of certain subjects, such as sickness or divorce, as well as in the sure cadences of his formal, fluent prose. Although much of this narrative is diverting—the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic (1981) deftly captures habits and attitudes—it has weaknesses that even his kind of people won't value: too much emphasis on school rituals and the family finances especially. As a record of a particular way of life, however, it is both faithful and emblematic.
Pub Date: March 1, 1989
ISBN: 1-55584-174-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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