Old age makes Poppy more reflective but not by much: mostly diverting mind candy.
A frivolously obtuse protagonist, determined to live as she pleases, romps through the 20th century.
Mustard heiress Poppy Minkel is willfully ignorant, bent on pleasure, and insensitive—to her children, her help, even her religion (Judaism). Not very promising heroine material, though Poppy is also an original in everything from her clothes to her hobbies (she learns to fly), with liberated ideas about sex and a career. She narrates her own story, which moves from her native New York to Paris and the English countryside, then back to NYC as she charges through life with dizzying speed and little thought. Poppy begins as the news comes that her wealthy father has gone down with the Titanic. His grieving widow immediately abandons the search for a husband for their adolescent offspring, and Poppy remains reluctantly housebound until WWI, when mother and daughter head out to do voluntary work. Next, while working for fun at Macy’s, Poppy meets impoverished writer Gilbert Catchings. They marry and have a daughter, Sapphire, who gets left home with Poppy’s sister Honey when the couple move to Paris. The Depression affects relatives, but not Poppy, still fabulously wealthy, who ditches Gilbert for Reggie, an Englishman with tenuous ties to the royal family, an English manor, and a daughter. Soon widowed, Poppy returns to Paris, blissfully unaware of the advancing Germans, from whom she barely escapes. Back in New York, she continues to shock her conservative kin by opening an avant-garde art gallery, dressing flamboyantly, and behaving unsuitably. Deaths in the family rarely set her back as her artists flourish, discreet nips and tucks keep her looking good, as do great clothes.
Old age makes Poppy more reflective but not by much: mostly diverting mind candy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-69132-1
Page Count: 374
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
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