A child's-eye view of sex and sexuality among Britain's elite that has a tone coy enough to turn off all but the most rabid Anglophile. This first novel opens in 1937 with 18-year-old narrator Amity Charlotte Augusta Savernake and her sister Claudia watching as their stepmother, Sonia, flees from the arts festival that she herself established at the family seat, Gunville Place. Amity, more commonly known as Amy, quickly flashes back to 1924 when her mother dies and her father marries Sonia, who had been his secretary, choosing her over Amy's beloved nanny. Social-climbing Sonia is delighted to become the Countess of Osmington, and Amy and the rest of her family are unkind to her. Then, in 1927, on a trip to London with Amy, Sonia runs into an old acquaintance, Rudi Longmire, who incites Sonia to organize the arts festival and throws their quiet country home into a tizzy. Youngsters Amy and Claudia (a few years her senior) are very curious about the facts of life (which they call ``doing sex''). By eavesdropping on the artists preparing for the festival, they learn a lot but understand little. Amy overhears one man telling another that, although he's a ``dedicated `so,' '' he's not blind to Sonia's charms. When Sonia acts in a play with some racy scenes, Amy reports, ``I went all hot, and Claudia gave me a great nudge. We had no doubt that this was exactly how SEX should be done.'' The high point for Amy is when her great aunt finally explains sex clearly and honestly. Stuffiness and back- stabbing run rampant among the guests and family. When Claudia asks desperately ``Is it going to be like this when we grow up, Amy? Having to mix with our own class however stupid and boring,'' it is all too easy to agree with her judgment. A hasty ending brings events up to date through the end of the war and ties storylines up neatly. Suffers from a bad case of the cutes.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11316-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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
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