A chilling, eloquent novel that draws you in with mystery and holds you there with love, obsession, failure, insanity, and an enchanting hybrid of past and present. Narrator Christine Ward lost her beloved college friend Orin Pierce when he reportedly drove off a cliff in New Mexico. She tried to get on with her life by marrying a pretentious French painter, having a son, and beginning her own watercolor career. But the memory of Pierce, as she called him, was always at the surface: ``He was in my mind nearly every day—sometimes for a moment, other times like an extended meditation.'' In addition, she was still reeling from her brother's suicide that same year, committed with a gun he had gotten from Pierce. So when her son was only five, Christine had a breakdown, and her husband, who criticized her work and looked at other women's breasts, took advantage of the situation and whisked their son off to Paris. Twenty years after Pierce's disappeaance, Christine has it together. She's working toward a major show, she's in a loving relationship with a former accountant who now owns a pizzeria, and her son, whom she has only seen three times in 12 years, wants to go to Yale and be near his mother in New Haven. But then Christine sees the name Orin Pierce in a stranger's Filo-Fax and hears his name called by a woman on the street; suddenly, she thinks there's been some mistake, that her best friend never died at all. Of course, she tracks down an Orin Pierce in New York City and a relationship ensues. And as she studies him for hints of the other Pierce and wonders how much a man could change in 20 years (could the bohemian actor she knew have become a bald, bespectacled real-estate dealer?), she learns more than she ever wanted to know about secrets and lies. Florey (Duet, 1987, etc.) infuses her typically irresistible characters with a depth and darkness that give her newest work a coherent vision and lasting effect.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-913089-43-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
