Carefully crafted but less-than-plausible debut by British author Clare.
Liddy Claver is 49—and unexpectedly six months pregnant.
The father? Barney, her lusty lover, young enough to be her son. But that’s not all the bad news. Liddy teaches jewelry-making, but the course has just been dropped by the local Adult Education Institute. She’s out of a job, and now best friend Mary says that Liddy’s husband Martin is having an affair. That’s no surprise, since she and Martin haven’t had sex in five years. Perhaps she should just run away to Cornwall and her lesbian great-aunts, Cleo and Cyn. They’d be understanding, unlike the rest of the family: moody, withdrawn Martin; gay son Alexander and his lover Mungo; homebody daughter Laura, married mother of twins and of a daughter with Down's syndrome; and her changeling child Miranda, a rail-thin writer with an eating disorder and a penchant for skewering others. All gather for Liddy’s 50th birthday party, but not before Martin confesses his infidelity. Everyone else has secret problems: Laura feels that husband Fergus isn’t interested in his less-than-perfect daughter. Miranda’s man, Richard, longs for children, but Miranda is obsessed with her flat tummy (Richard hasn’t noticed that she throws up most of her food). Alex and Mungo are happy, but Alex is toying with the idea of having a baby the gay way, by persuading a lesbian friend to incubate it. Liddy is too self-absorbed to pick up on any of this and does head for Cornwall and the great-aunts, telling them about her pregnancy. Then Richard finds out Miranda’s secret: she’s had two abortions. They fight. Alex and Mungo squabble. Liddy stays in Cornwall to help care for the ailing Cleo and gives birth to a daughter. Each of her grown children feels entitled to claim the baby, but Liddy isn’t about to give up Hope.
Carefully crafted but less-than-plausible debut by British author Clare.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-94637-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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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