A sometimes-strained storyline, but Brooke’s infectious verve and wry commentary on mothers and fathers—as well as on men...
The latest from Karbo (The Diamond Lane, 1991, etc.), a witty and astringent take on motherhood, crackles with insights and humor in detailing a woman’s responses to her own first child—and to the pregnancy of her unmarried friend, who’s been wooed by a local blueblood.
Brooke, a former filmmaker married to Lyle, is besotted with six-month-old Stella. Like most new mothers, she’s in love with her baby. Stella made it all worthwhile, the pregnancy itself, which made you “an anarchist of the flesh, a truly dangerous woman” because the baby became your top priority, not your body, and even labor, which “between the excruciating moments could actually be quite boring.” Husband Lyle, though, like most men, is reluctant to change diapers or baby-sit, and he spends increasingly more time in the basement playing computer games. But for the moment Stella is completely and absorbingly hers, and Brooke is eager to share her knowledge and experience when she learns that single friend Mary Rose is pregnant. Brook and Mary Rose, best of buddies, also share a devotion to their hometown basketball team, and once, on a girls’ night out, had a drink with two players. It was an action with unanticipated consequences. Mary Rose thinks wealthy Ward, Brooke’s cousin, is the father of her baby-to-be, and Audra, Ward’s mother, is eager for the two to marry so she can become a grandmother. But Ward, a handsome coward, soon has to disclose hitherto hidden impediments to the marriage—not something pleasing to Mary Rose, who finds herself suddenly caught up in a prenatal custody suit. The earlier-than-expected birth of Patricia changes everything, and though Ward’s unhinged brother Dicky tries to kidnap the infant, Mary Rose is as fierce a mother as Brooke, who’s been prepping her for the big moment from the start.
A sometimes-strained storyline, but Brooke’s infectious verve and wry commentary on mothers and fathers—as well as on men and women—more than compensate.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58234-083-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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