Though written for a young-adult audience, this warm, charming novel's message about the healing and transformative power of...
Lyrical, fact-based fiction tracing the incremental liberation of a musically gifted Venetian girl.
Italy in the mid-1700s provides the lush, historical backdrop for the coming-of-age of Viva, 19, who was orphaned as a baby at the Ospedale de Maria della Pietã, a Catholic charity home for girls renowned for their dazzling, disciplined choir performances. But Viva is restless and knows the home sequesters its girls right into adulthood with little opportunity to leave the property independently and uncover "the distant and impossible." Viva resorts to escaping to the school's rooftop to dream of one day leaving the orphanage's confines to write musical compositions, a pastime that is forbidden to the girls at the home. While instructing younger students makes up a good portion of her days, Viva takes a Venetian governor's reticent daughter named Angelica under her wing and then becomes naturally maternal to Emilie, the latest tiny orphan to be left on the orphanage's doorstep, a baby whom she believes holds musical intuition. When intrepid, enterprising Swiss ambassador Jean-Jacques Rousseau arrives, he is instantly enamored of Viva and prearranges a secret escape and elopement for Angelica and her new beau, Abate Casanova. As the grand Easter celebration nears, Viva is in love and her immense talents blossom and begin to become recognized, but Emilie's mysterious origins sets off a disastrous chain of events. Slim in length yet eloquently written, Meyer's strength lies in the story's descriptive characterization: "Viva-the-Alto" makes for an engaging, virtuous protagonist with her fiery red hair framing a face grotesquely scarred by smallpox; her fellow students, some brash and catty, others timid and fearful, are a vivid and authentic supporting cast. Concluding historical notes (with photographs) afford an interesting look into ospedale life.
Though written for a young-adult audience, this warm, charming novel's message about the healing and transformative power of music will appeal to readers of any age.Pub Date: June 20, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4303-2290-0
Page Count: 132
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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