From the Brooklyn-based Cook, an earnest coming-of-age tale featuring two sisters from Atlanta whose mother dies of breast cancer—standard first-novel fare that never provokes, never offends, and never sparks much interest, either. Twelve-year-old Tilden has always been a quiet observer, lingering on the edge of the more vibrant world inhabited by her prettier younger sister, Elizabeth, and by Frances, their optimistic, homily-spouting, divorced mother. When Frances returns home to Atlanta from a wedding up north, Tilden watches anxiously as a flurry of romantic correspondence with a man she met there turns into yet another move. Happily, though, this journey to Nick Olsen's home on Long Island turns out to be a healthy one: Nick, the owner of a limousine service, is a good guy who helps the girls with their homework, cleans up around the house, and works hard to live up to his new role of substitute dad. The girls' adjustment to this new life would appear relatively painless, in fact, if it weren't for Frances's discovery of a lump in her breast, her subsequent mastectomy, and her lingering death over the course of Tilden's 13th year—an event that leaves the two girls with no one to look after them but bumbling Nick. This bomb dropped into the center of Tilden's life might be expected to cause some interesting shock waves, but in fact the adults who surround Tilden and Elizabeth prove so adept at helping the girls adjust to the pain of losing their beloved mother that there's little doubt they'll land on their feet. Even when Frances's no-account brother, Rand, turns up for a visit and makes a half-hearted sexual pass at Tilden, he so deeply regrets his transgression that there's nothing for the reader to sink her teeth into. In the end, this drama remains, like its sturdy heroine, well- intentioned but bland.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-44828-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
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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