Though the climactic revelation feels contrived, Morton’s characters and their predicaments are affecting, and she recreates...
In Australian author Morton’s atmospheric first novel, a 98-year-old woman recollects her unwitting role in a fatal deception.
Grace, a prominent former archeologist, is living out her waning years in a British nursing home, when an American filmmaker, Ursula, asks her to consult on a movie about the scandalous 1924 suicide of a poet during a lavish soirée at Riverton, a country estate where Grace once served as parlor maid to the Hartford family. Extended flashbacks excavate the mysteries that surround Grace almost from the first. Why did Grace’s mother, herself a servant at Riverton before leaving under a cloud, send her 14-year-old daughter to work there? Who is Grace’s father? The domestic servant is a convenient expository device: Grace can eavesdrop on every Hartford family crisis. Hannah, her sister Emmeline and brother David occasionally visit Riverton, owned by their uncle, Lord Ashbury. Their father, Frederick, the second son, is an automobile pioneer. But World War I upends the destinies of the Hartford clan. David, his schoolmate Robbie and Grace’s heartthrob, Alfred, a footman, all go to fight. David is killed, Robbie drops out of sight and Alfred suffers shell shock. The war also claims the lives of Lord Ashbury and his eldest son, and Frederick inherits the title. Frederick’s business is mortgaged to American bankers, the Luxtons, who force a sale of his factory. To Frederick’s chagrin, Hannah marries Luxton scion Teddy, who, after flirting briefly with bohemian ways, reverts to stodgy banker-hood. Languishing in London while her estranged father lets Riverton decay, Hannah relies increasingly on Grace, now her personal maid. Hannah’s mistaken assumption that Grace knows shorthand leads both to make a tragic error in judgment. Meanwhile, Robbie resurfaces, his psyche scarred by war. Although ostensibly courting Emmeline, Robbie is drawn into an adulterous affair with Hannah that proves his undoing.
Though the climactic revelation feels contrived, Morton’s characters and their predicaments are affecting, and she recreates the period with a sure hand.Pub Date: April 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5051-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
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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