A warmhearted tale of crisis and friendship.
Long tells the story of a disorganized woman reacting to her friend’s AIDS diagnosis in this debut novella.
The biggest problem in Annie Winters’ life is that she’s never on time for anything. Such is the case when she’s preparing for a night out with her girlfriends and her friend Bo stops by, having just returned to New York City from a visit with his family in Georgia. She and Bo have been friends since childhood, and an easy intimacy exists between them, largely centered on jokes, gossip, and food. It’s apparent to her that Bo is acting strangely, and he refuses to join her and their friends for their night on the town. The pair part on good terms, but Annie knows something’s up. What she doesn’t know is how big that something is: “Never in my wildest dreams,” she narrates, “did I envision my life being turned around so drastically in a twenty-four-hour period.” The next day, Bo arrives with breakfast and big news: he has AIDS. He contracted the disease during a temporary relapse into heroin use, an old habit connected to his service in the Vietnam War. The diagnosis led to Bo’s losing his job and his family disowning him. Annie promises to help see him through to the end of his illness, but the pressure of the circumstances—and the ways in which they each react to them—threatens to cause them to squander the time that they have left. Long’s prose is maximalist and conversational, giving readers the sensation that they’re hearing it over the phone as one long monologue. She writes Annie as gregarious and voluble, a woman who reacts to things deeply and loudly. Bo comes off as even-tempered and self-deprecating, and the friendship between the two feels genuine, even when their actions and reactions are occasionally theatrical. The story ends up about where readers will expect it, and Long isn’t afraid of sentimentality, which saps the ending of some of its profundity. Even so, she offers a caregiving story that’s full of humor and petty concerns, creating relatable characters that, after the end comes, readers will miss.
A warmhearted tale of crisis and friendship.Pub Date: April 25, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4257-5198-2
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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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