What does it all mean? Hard to say. Dull prose and self-absorbed heroine are just plain irritating.
Whiny sequel to the kvetchy What She Saw . . . (2000).
A decade after her college years, Phoebe Fine is still not happy—the not-so-burning question is, Why not? Raise your hand if you care. Okay, don’t. It’s all the same to Phoebe, who moves back to Whitehead, New Jersey, six miles southeast of Paramus, to be with her parents, for lots of reasons. She hates her job. Her apartment is depressing. Her last relationship tanked. Therapy isn’t helping. Her friends are married. She doesn’t want to succeed at anything. She drinks like a fish. She doesn’t want to live in New York anymore. She has nightmares about giant cockroaches. Her mother, a classical violist, has cancer. Roberta Fine uses the “c-word” to avoid talking about the “d-word,” but it’s clear that the older woman is gravely ill—and that auburn wig with short bangs she has to wear is so awful Phoebe just can’t stand it. She can remember when her mother’s long, hippie-style hair was, like, so embarrassing, and now poor old mom doesn’t have any. How ironic, thinks Phoebe, who is big on solipsistic musing. And her dad is daffier than ever, an occupational hazard of professional oboists, who are said to literally blow their brains out. Being with her parents is driving her crazy. Hanging out downtown with the fabulous, the desperate, and everyone in between isn’t much better, but she does have a slightly higher chance of getting laid. A swain appears: Stinky Mancuso, back from Novel #1, is alive and well and living under a Frenchified name. How uncool. An epiphany of sorts awaits: Phoebe realizes she didn’t move back home to take care of her mother, she moved back home to have her mother take care of her. A non sequitur is tossed in to liven up the dragging plot: Her mother’s cherished viola turns out to be a Guarneri.
What does it all mean? Hard to say. Dull prose and self-absorbed heroine are just plain irritating.Pub Date: March 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6185-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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
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