Ahl writes with an intensity that never quite goes over the line into melodrama, although it comes close at times, and her...
Quirky but appealing debut about a young woman who returns to her childhood home in Africa to set some family ghosts to rest.
Anthropologist Elena Monroe is having some trouble finding herself. She grew up in Africa, where her stepfather researched polio and smallpox vaccines while her mother photographed elephants for conservation groups. Now she lives in New Mexico and tells everyone her mother died in 1975. But her boyfriend Michael, who lost his parents as a teenager and thinks they have that in common, one day meets Elena’s mother leaning on her car in Albuquerque. Why did Elena lie to him? Good question, especially after Elena packs up and leaves for Kenya the next day to visit her mother’s grave. In 1975, when Elena was only nine, East Africa was in the throes of an ivory craze, as skyrocketing prices combined with conservation laws to fuel a thriving black market in elephant tusks. Elena’s mother set out to document the poaching cartels that rampaged through the bush in search of big profits from illegal safaris, and she soon found herself in the middle of a mob war of sorts, in which the legal boundaries separating the mobsters from the militias from the cabinet ministers were all but erased. We know that the young Elena saw someone killed during an elephant shoot; we also know that someone is buried beneath her mother’s tombstone. It will take some doing to disentangle the rest of the facts from this intentionally snarled narrative, but that doesn’t dampen the fire here. Maybe after Elena sorts it all out she can come home and get on with her life—if she’s lucky.
Ahl writes with an intensity that never quite goes over the line into melodrama, although it comes close at times, and her evocation of Kenya is impressionistic and moving without being manipulative or touristy.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-56689-154-X
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
