The author tends to tell rather than show, but all the same her complex story is insightful in its portrayal of an older...
A new widow ventures to Italy seeking romance, renewal, and her long-lost daughter, in a second novel from Briskin (The Tree Still Stands, 1990).
Anne is an independent, spirited, 67-year-old TV producer with a cable show dedicated to issues of concern to women. With her late husband, she had taken many trips over the last decade to Florence, where their runaway teenaged daughter Susan had last been seen. Anne never found Susan, but she had found passionate, scar-faced Vincenzo, the guide who aided the couple in their always futile searches. With no love in her life at present, Anne decides to go to Florence once more to see whether the sparks she had sensed before in Vincenzo can be fanned into flame. They can and are, but there’s a problem: Vincenzo’s wife, who has Anne to dinner and proves to be loyal and caring, even if somewhat condescending to him. Despite her misgivings, Anne signals to Vincenzo that they should proceed, and so they sneak off to his hilltop Tuscan hideaway to start their tryst. For both it is everything they’ve waited for, but the weather and Vincenzo’s family obligations keep them from getting together often during Anne’s stay. On the day before she’s to return to California, they are able to meet again, but the mood this time is one of desperation, as Vincenzo demands that Anne postpone her departure. Then, miraculously, Susan walks in front of their car as they stop for gas—her two sons in tow.
The author tends to tell rather than show, but all the same her complex story is insightful in its portrayal of an older woman still able to experience life in all its pleasures and pain.Pub Date: March 13, 2002
ISBN: 1-880284-49-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
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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