A gentle tale of an island buffeted by wild winds and imbued with melancholy.
A tender evocation of a sheltered valley.
In his delicately wrought debut novel, journalist, songwriter, and nonfiction writer Tallack (The Undiscovered Islands:An Archipelago of Myths and Mysteries, Phantoms and Fakes, 2017, etc.) explores the meaning of place, freedom, and community to residents of a remote Scottish island. Like Anne Tyler’s Baltimore or Jane Smiley’s Iowa, Tallack’s Shetland valley, a landscape that he knows intimately, is integral to the lives of his characters, who seek solace and communion there: emotionally wounded Sandy, for one; Alice, a mystery writer grieving after her husband’s sudden death; and Terry, escaping loneliness in alcohol. For Sandy, who lives in one of the island’s larger towns, the valley insulates him “from the fractured world that once had seemed so threatening,” making him feel “absorbed by the place, without being destroyed by it.” He came with his girlfriend, Emma, whose parents are crofters, a way of life her father inherited without question: “both a gift and a choice.” Emma, though, feeling smothered by the valley, has left, suddenly, to make other choices. When her father offers Sandy work and a place to live, the young man decides to stay. Also escaping a fractured world is Alice, who has returned to the island that enchanted her on her honeymoon. Now she plans to write about it, “to contain it in words and in thoughts, to describe the place and to encompass it.” Provisionally titled The Valley at the Centre of the World, the book project, she hopes, will give her a sense of belonging. But learning about hedgehogs, sheep, and hares leaves Alice longing to know more about her elusive, reticent neighbors. After an elderly woman dies, her journals, diaries, and letters are passed on to Alice. But neither the writings nor the woman’s house, which Sandy moves into, reveal Maggie’s inner life. Indeed, Tallack’s gentle, compassionate portrayal of his characters leaves their hearts and minds inviolable: “Sometimes,” one woman remarks to Terry, “things lose their magic when you know how to take them apart.”
A gentle tale of an island buffeted by wild winds and imbued with melancholy.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78689-230-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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