Moving, artfully written Gen-Y roman à clef.
A young woman who introduces her best friend to her formerly nerdy high-school companion has mixed feelings about the situation when the two begin a romantic relationship.
Drifting in a way typical to recent college graduates, aspiring illustrator Willa takes considerable comfort in the fact that her roommate Jane is in the same boat. Sharing a dingy Milwaukee apartment, the girls are closer than sisters and have similar lanky, curly-haired good looks. Jane, who works as a housecleaner but writes poetry on the side, is, in Willa's mind, a sunnier and more confident version of herself. Their cozy twosome is altered forever, though, with the arrival of Ben. Willa and Ben were inseparable in high school, and after a seven-year separation meet again at a reunion, where Ben confesses to a longtime crush on her. Willa senses Ben's appeal, but after an awkward first kiss relegates him to the "friend" role. And soon after Ben meets Jane. Willa, happy to see her two favorite people in love, initially blesses their union, and they become a happy trio, doing everything together. Willa also takes an easy job in a flower shop and dates a slippery Irishman named Declan, but Ben and Jane remain the center of her world. But when Ben asks Jane to marry him, Willa panics, worrying that life is going forward without her. Jealous of what Jane has, and still hurting over past events (such as the demise of her parent's marriage), Willa makes an irreversible decision guaranteed to have painful repercussions for everyone involved. In spite of the novel's predictable scenario, Fox (Still Life with Husband, 2007) has a talent for language and her wounded, witty Willa is a remarkably complex creation.
Moving, artfully written Gen-Y roman à clef.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-26811-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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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