A quiet, meditative tale about devotion in its many forms.
A reserved second outing by Yoshikawa (One Hundred and One Ways, 1999), filled with regret and recriminations, about two stepsisters reunited.
After a 17-year-long separation and silence, Claudia is both overjoyed and troubled when stepsister Rei contacts her. Rei is moving to Boston, so the two will be together again, but Claudia wants to know why Rei disappeared in the first place. When Claudia was nine, her kind but plodding father Henry shocked everyone by quickly divorcing Claudia’s mother to marry Hana, a Japanese widow he met at the hardware store. Claudia (who spent weekends with her father’s new family) and Rei became sisters in the truest sense of the word, thinking of each other as twins, wondering how anyone could tell them apart. Though she hated Hana for dissolving her family (and still does), Claudia was spellbound by the stories Rei told, fairy tales involving Hana and the crown prince of Japan, about Hana the dedicated young artist, about Hana and America. Now that Rei is back, cagey and unwilling to talk about the skin cancer that nearly killed her, Claudia is revisited by images of Hana. Always fascinated by the woman who stole her father, Claudia feels she is now truly her stepmother’s child since she herself is having an affair with a married man. Claudia and Vikram have been devoted to each other for the past two years, but his traditional family won’t allow for divorce, especially with his two children so young. The irony is not lost on Claudia, but her intractable dislike for Hana remains. Though a bit splintered in its focus, the final revelations—why Hana abandoned Henry after eight years of blissful marriage, why Hana became obsessed with painting mushrooms, why Hana eventually takes all responsibility for Rei’s cancer—serve less as compulsory climax than as simple extensions of the stories Rei has been telling Claudia all their lives about the mysterious and unknowable Hana.
A quiet, meditative tale about devotion in its many forms.Pub Date: June 3, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-80155-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
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
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