What do men want? The upper hand, as always, according to this offbeat, darkly comic novel about relationships, Naumoff's third (following Rootie Kazootie, 1990). Monroe is a 40-ish emergency-room doctor somewhere in North Carolina. Once he was a needy kid from a broken home; then he married the incomparable Katy, soaking up everything this generous woman had to offer until his possessiveness ended their idyll. Since their breakup, Monroe has turned into a compassionate knight, rescuing women like Lydia, a clerical worker at his hospital, demoralized after two failed marriages to ``crude, hard-drinking'' guys. But there's a catch to Monroe's chivalry, as Lydia (living with him at the start of the novel) is finding out: As she regains her assertiveness, Monroe's interest fades. ``They like us weak. I swear they do,'' she tells her friend Martha, just ending a long marriage to chauvinist Bob, who asks Monroe, ``Haven't you ever been mad enough to hit a woman?'' The doctor's been tempted, sure, but seeing the results of domestic violence, close up, every day, has powerfully reinforced Monroe's basic decency; besides, he has a new rescue mission. His neighbors' 18-year-old daughter Ronnie is begging for help, and Monroe fancies the idea of this wild, sensual, unhappy teenager as his infinitely malleable ``little gal.'' They will start a new life in California; he sneaks her out of town, having turned Lydia loose and patched up his last ER patient, poor Martha, who had fared even worse with her new beau, an ex-con, than with Bob; his buddies had tied her to the balcony by her hair after she had obligingly pleasured them. ``Wantonness in women would always be punished.'' So says the authorial voice, which becomes damagingly intrusive, the tail wagging the dog, as this underplotted novel progresses and its characters flatten out into case-histories; the best stuff is in the lighter, more playful first half.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-15-187991-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
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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