by Lloyd Rees ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 1994
A sappy first novel about adolescence and midlife crisis, all wrapped up into one long run-on sentence. We first meet 36-year-old Tom Browning at the beginning of the fall in the British high school where he teaches music. This semester Tom has been coerced into including popular music in a new course entitled ``Modern Studies.'' When he asks the class to respond to some Simon and Garfunkel lyrics, Claire Bennett is the only student to answer with understanding and depth. Immediately thereafter, as if struck by lightning, Tom falls in love with the girl, because, ``above all, she was an outsider, set apart from all the other adolescents in the room.'' But Tom is married—to the clinging, nagging, and jealous Annie, whom he views more as a nuisance than a soul mate. (He sees daughter Rachel and son Tarquin in much the same light.) The dark and mysterious Claire, by contrast, reawakens feelings of arousal the likes of which Tom hasn't experienced in years. The story proceeds to describe how this balding, middle-aged man wins the heart of the young girl in an effort to regain a bit of his youth. Along the way we also learn about Don Marcus, Tom's witty co-worker, who helps keep the illicit couple's little secret. On Claire's side, her wild and crazy friend Rose serves as a confidante and an alibi. What follows is a series of tàte-Ö-tàtes, mostly in pubs and on a class trip, followed by a predictable ending with little punch. The language is thick and tiresome to wade through. Don't get too close to this one.
Pub Date: June 8, 1994
ISBN: 1-85411-097-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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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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