by Madison Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 1996
Born-and-bred southerner Jones, author of six previous novels (Last Things, 1989, etc.), imparts an authentic redneck flavor to this way overplotted but nonetheless amusing tale of one family's woes and ultimate downfall in the Appalachian foothills. It's the 1950s, and just outside Riverton, in eastern Tennessee, the Moss family is trying to make ends meet—or at least some of them are. Partly the trouble is that everyone for miles around sees the family as worthless white trash; partly it's also that out of them all—Mama, Daddy, and the eight kids—only Mama, Eve, Coop, and Chester (who narrates) have any sense at all. Daddy's a dimwit and full of lame-brained, money-making schemes; Dud and Stack are lumbering fools; Mabel and Dorcas have hardly a brain between them; and Bucky is in fact brain-damaged (though he's the only one of the Moss men who earns any money). Chester wants more out of life for himself and his siblings, as do Coop and Mama, but clearly the cards are stacked against them. Then, after long- lost Uncle Clarence shows up and is promptly murdered by the relentless Sheriff Tipps (whose hatred of the Moss family is never fully explained), an even steeper downward spiral of trouble begins. Dorcas, the only beautiful Moss sister, falls in with the wrong crowd and ends up pregnant; Stack becomes an example at the evil hand of Tipps; and even Coop winds up in big trouble when the death of the fortune-teller Madame Shula is pinned firmly on him. By the time the Moss family lose their farm, even Chester's hopes have dwindled, and the story ends with a whimper as the surviving Mosses either move into a dismal trailer or flee the scene. Jones manages to make what could be just another quirky-white- trash-characters assembly-line output into a flawed but often funny novel worth reading for laughs, if not enlightenment.
Pub Date: May 21, 1996
ISBN: 1-56352-278-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Longstreet
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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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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