by Linda Phillips Ashour ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1992
Fragmented story—marked by a fatal lack of development—of three generations of the Hanks Petroleum family. After dropping 20 characters in the first 15 pages, Ashour (Speaking in Tongues, 1988) bounds around from 1884 to 1991 and from character to character, shredding both story and family. Nelson, an ambitious young Iowa barber, travels to Indian Territory to promote drilling ventures, taking wife Lavinia, a banker's daughter, to live in a tent city. (Potentially the most interesting part of the book, this crude new life is reduced, like everything else, to a few pages.) Nelson finds more than oil, however—he also finds a long relationship with a prostitute named Zoe Simply, as well as with the banking business, taking deposits from outlaws of the day while reading Police Gazette. Son Hubbell becomes a wispy drunk, visiting health spas to dry out and losing his house in a poker game. His wife, Mary, spends most of her time trying to inspire him, fails, and finally leaves. By the time Laydelle (Joy Baby) is born, the family energy has fizzled, and she'll devote her life to failing at what her mother and grandfather excelled at- -promoting. Bits of family history merge with snippets of actual history—peeks at oil booms, hints of deals with the Osage Indians, fleeting appearances by outlaws and presidents and governors. Every time the author seems prepared to deal with an event or time or place, she's off again. Disappointing effort by a talented writer who seems to dislike the novel's form.
Pub Date: July 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-68331-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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