An unforgettable kid narrates this cracked, acerbic novel.
Young Zoe charms all in Van Middlesworth’s debut novel about a very dysfunctional clan.
Van Middlesworth gives her readers a memorable cast. Zoe King is a tough, scarily perceptive kid through whose eyes we take in the story. “Knife” is her punk Revlon Doll who rides in her holster and gives advice. She is protective of her little brother, Willy, who is addled but a genius of sorts. “Daddy Dead” and “Mother Blind” tells us what Zoe thinks of her parents—Daddy is especially no bargain—and then there is “Aunt Oink,” Mother Blind’s younger sister, whom Daddy impregnates. He divorces Mother Blind, marries Oink, then splits after their baby, Zuzu, falls to her death out a window. And this is just a small sampling of the characters and the chaos they generate. Things are a bit hard to follow because we are never sure what really happens and what—like an impromptu flight to Paris—comes from Zoe’s surreal imagination. We watch Zoe grow up while trying to deal with all this. Eventually she gets into enough trouble that she winds up in The New Jersey Training School for Girls (one of only three white girls there, an eye-opener). After a year or so, she earns parole. The End. Call it a story of survival. Van Middlesworth, a much published writer, has undeniable gifts. Zoe is wise and naïve and mesmerizing. Startling lines and imagery are on every page: “I want to shrink into my hand and run down all the paths on my palm.” Zuzu’s death causes “something invisible like a blade of sad slicing us together.” There is love here, but hardly the tidy Hallmark kind. Zoe is a kid who works with what she’s got, having little choice. No surprise, she dreams of getting a pilot’s license. Maybe she will. We hope she will. And fly away with Willy.
An unforgettable kid narrates this cracked, acerbic novel.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947175-11-2
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Serving House Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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