A vivid, fast-paced but schematic reprise of familiar themes from Alther (Bedrock, 1990, etc.), as latest protagonist Jude learns about love, life, and her sexuality in Tennessee, Manhattan, and Paris. When her beautiful mother dies in childbirth, Jude experiences the first of three traumatic losses that will shadow her life for many years. ``I want to be in heaven with my momma,'' she tells her father, the doctor in their Tennessee mountain town. But she also tells their housekeeper, ``I don't want to be a girl,'' because girls grow up, have babies, and die like her mother. Having laid out the themes of death and identity, Alther briskly moves on to tell the story of Jude's defining friendship with new neighbor Molly, a soulmate with whom she shares numerous activities. Junior high tests a friendship that had endured since first grade, as Molly, frightened of what her feelings for Jude imply, begins dating boys. When she's killed in an automobile accident, Jude's only consolation is local nerd Sandy's friendship. Sandy moves to New York and becomes an opera technician; Jude, now a graduate student, moves in with him and his friends. She soon learns that Sandy is gay, but there's a palpable attraction between them that they consummate only a few days before the Stonewall riots, in the wake of which Sandy is savagely beaten and dies. Poor Jude, now a successful editor, seems jinxed: Her next lover, an older married woman, also dies. But returning home after an unhappy time working in Paris, Jude finally understands that love, even when it ends with death, is ``the only thing about her that would survive.'' She is now ready to live and love again. Alther has the enviable knack of giving some heft to usually anodyne women's fiction, though her characters, often composites of current feminist angsts, are less successful. Still, fans will enjoy.
Pub Date: May 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93893-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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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