Hip and understated, but, at its heart, embarrassingly mawkish and sentimental.
Britisher O’Farrell’s second (following her award-winning debut, After You’d Gone, 2001) is a fairly standard tale, set in London, of girls meeting, getting, and losing boys.
Lily is a professional translator who gave up her career because she found herself unable to think in English anymore, and she now moves among odd jobs as secretary, babysitter, and window-dresser while living at home with her mother. At an art gallery opening, she meets Marcus, a handsome architect, who makes a pass at her and invites her to live with him—as a roommate. With nothing to lose, Lily agrees and moves into Marcus’s custom-designed loft, taking the room that until recently had belonged to a woman named Sinead (who, Marcus explains ominously, “is no longer with us”). Sinead’s presence hovers over the room like a ghost (her clothes, her perfume, Marcus’s unwillingness to talk about her), and Lily finds herself increasingly haunted—to such a degree that at times she even sees Sinead in the apartment. Is she losing her mind? Possibly—but not in the way she thinks: Sinead is alive and well, teaching at a London university, and, eventually, Lily sees her in a bookstore. By this time, Lily has become Marcus’s lover and has figured out that Sinead was an old flame whom Marcus preferred not to discuss. But Lily needs to know what went wrong between them, and she begins stalking Sinead in an attempt to speak to her. Eventually she succeeds, and Sinead tells Lily what came between her and Marcus. It’s not really much of a secret—in fact, it sounds a bit like an episode of Friends—but it lets Lily know what sort of man she’s dealing with.
Hip and understated, but, at its heart, embarrassingly mawkish and sentimental.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-670-03215-8
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
