A surfeit of detail and a slow-moving plot hobble this second novel by the author of Family Values (1993). The premise is plausible and provocative: Tightly wound psychiatrist Pam Thompson discovers that her husband is having an affair with one of her clients, the suicidal Joan Dwyer, and sets out on a high-stakes quest to preserve both Dwyer and her marriage. But the need to control her emotions as well as her patient causes Thompson to mismanage the therapy, driving Dwyer ever closer to killing herself. There's plenty of room for intrigue as Pam and husband Dennis Perry alternately try to wound each other and to resurrect their relationship, while the guileless Dwyer serves as their field of battle. But David's over-rationalized schema leaves little room for the sort of surprises that would make it all fun. In all-too-appropriate keeping with the endlessly speculative nature of Thompson's psychiatric practice, much of the action is anticipated before it takes place. Rather than offering readers opportunities to make judgments or connections, David allows them only to work through a welter of agonized reflection and rationalization by all three characters. The author is conversant enough with the therapeutic process, but his workmanlike prose lacks urgency or insight, and what sex there is adds little heat to the proceedings. Excessive amounts of minutia about the characters' lives—TV shows, brand names, gourmet food—seem to be intended as cultural criticism, but such descriptions muffle the narrative's interesting turns (of which there are several). Much of the best action comes too late, after the reader's patience has worn thin. Some sharp-eyed producer will purchase movie rights to Need, hone it to essentials, inject a good deal more eroticism, and create a fine thriller; the book itself offers too few fireworks. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43433-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994
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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