A mental hospital helps a severely depressed young woman take charge of her life—in a heartfelt but uninspired first novel from children's book author Barrett. Elizabeth Miller has stopped working at the pants factory in her small southern town, so depressed that she sleeps all the time in the family home where she lives with her well-meaning but ineffectual father and the domineering mother who is the cause of all her problems. Years before, Vera Miller had accidentally killed Elizabeth's older sister Angela, then a small child, by backing over her in the car. From that point, Vera has raised Elizabeth as a substitute for her vanished angel, always thinking Angela, not Elizabeth. The result is a 28-year-old who is ``half-woman, half- child,'' who has never dated, who has zero self-esteem, who is a domestic slave: ``All my life I've been going and getting for Mama.'' Then, encouraged by sympathetic Aunt Lona, she enters the hospital and begins to discard Angela and become Elizabeth, even breaking her self-imposed taboo by revealing that her mother had her suck at her breast when she was a six-year-old. Elizabeth tells us her story at an excruciatingly slow pace. All the emphasis is on the heavy lifting she has to do to develop her identity; hospital, staff, and patients are poorly characterized. The staff are a mixed bag (Elizabeth blooms under the care of Dr. Adams but is propositioned by Dr. Johnstone) and her fellow-patients sketchy outlines; the suicide of her favorite, Hemp, is a non-event. At the close, Elizabeth heads out to enjoy her new-found freedom. Whatever the actual case, this reads like autobiography: therapy for the author, perhaps, but slim pickings for the reader.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-945575-43-2
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
