An uneven debut that might have been better as nonfiction: bogged down by a forced sentimentality, raised up by fine...
A young American finds her missing father when she travels to Havana—and learns how to survive as a high-priced prostitute.
Alysia Briggs is 13 when her dying mother tells her that her real father is José Antonio, and that some day she must find him in Cuba. Alysia, raised a diplomat’s daughter and born in Havana, concludes that the handsome translator mentioned in her mother’s journals is her biological father. Ten years later, she jeopardizes her career in the Foreign Service and, on a student visa, goes to Cuba, where in her first week the $25,000 she brought is stolen. Because of restrictions on her visa, she can neither work nor leave the island for a year. Destitute, she takes the advice of her new friend Camila and enters the life of the jinetera, whereupon begins the story’s duality: on the one hand lies the pallid melodrama of finding the long-lost father; on the other, the revelatory portrait of contemporary Cuba’s demimonde society. A jinetera, or jockey, lures wealthy tourists into “affairs,” weeklong associations that provide gifts of jewelry or clothes and sometimes cash. Unlike the common prostitute paid by the hour or deed, the jinetera has long-term goals: monthly checks, return island visits, sometimes even marriage. Camila, a heart surgeon by day, has many “boyfriends”—a Syrian official, a Spanish oil magnate—and a house full of luxuries her paltry salary could never buy. Far from shameful, the pragmatic Cuban views the jinetera as clever and resourceful, and she is sometimes lucky enough to support her whole family. Alysia uses her new profession (which surprisingly causes little distress) to buy information about her father, but that plot line seems tacked on, an afterthought to the far more intriguing subject of contemporary Cuba, where the best educated are simultaneously among the poorest on earth.
An uneven debut that might have been better as nonfiction: bogged down by a forced sentimentality, raised up by fine reportage.Pub Date: May 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-072174-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Rayo/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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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