Macdonald continues his lightly linked Cornwall series (A Woman Possessed, 1993, etc.) with a tale of voluble and feisty young women who give off sparks and set off conflagrations in a tight little village community of antagonistic genders and generations. The prime mover here is Lorna Sancreed, who arrives unannounced in 1920 at the handsome home of recently widowed Jessica Lanyon, mother of three. Inexplicably the two become essential to one another. Is it because each lost a man after the Great War? Or because Lorna loves to cook and Jessica hates it? Jessica is conservative, discreet; she mourns her loveless marriage more than her husband's death. Unmarried, pregnant Lorna, estranged from her family, flamboyant and irreverent, follows a compulsion to change the lives around her. The housemates flare up, make up, and find themselves in a thicket of romantic possibilities/impossibilities. Jessica struggles to hide her passion for neighbor Dr. David Carne, miserably married to maddening Estelle, who loathes him and feigns illness until Lorna routs her out. Lorna, crusader for honesty and the Airing of Feelings, has a rousing seaside idyll with David; a chaste kiss, with a proposition for noble, prim tavern owner Ben; and a dalliance with young Bill, an aeronautics enthusiast. ``How do men and women manage to live together at all?'' asks one character. Cluttering the flurry of chums and chumps once Lorna's baby is born is a brace of growling Grandpas (one was featured in A Woman Alone, 1991). Macdonald also provides glimpses of early 20th century machines, from flying to flivver, and some great scenery. At the close, there's a not particularly lamented flight and happy, even providential pairings. As in the author's other Cornwall-set tangles of passion and predation between the sexes, the talk floods like a Cornish tide. Some may find the sheer volume of chatter enervating, but on the whole, the gossiping village neighbors will prove to be genial company for the author's following.
Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11080-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
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
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