A gently hortatory tale set in England's Yorkshire and various suburbs from the '40s to the '70s, dealing with the progress of two cousins, one domestic and home-loving, the other an energetic career woman. Along the way, this British author muses on the briefcase/bassinet decision, marriage, and on old ways, old places, old loyalties. Nell was raised by rough-hewn, hardworking Yorkshire farmer Uncle George and his wife Liz, along with cousins Derek and loveable Chrissie. As a child, she'd harbored a dream of a house of her own, to be shared with her widower father, an alcoholic. It was a dream much deferred, however, and then gone forever when her father died in London. Eventually Nell was taken under the doughty wing of her great-aunt Thorpe, a headmistress, and, excelling in her studies, was on her way to an academic career, determined never to marry. Meanwhile, Chrissie, married to kind engineer Jack, seems destined for domesticity and motherhood. (Her dream—to train as a nurse—was discouraged early on by her well-meaning parents.) So Nell, now a professor of sociology at a new university, is content with work and occasional affairs—until she meets and falls in love with writer Gregory. She feels, oddly, ``married,'' buys a house, thinks of a baby. Then into the lives of both women come disillusionment and a crumbling of certainties. Chrissie, her children grown, confronts the empty nest: ``If she could now achieve nothing, she was nothing.'' Also Jack, after decades of loyalty to his firm, is casually shed. Nell, also reeling from betrayal, joins Chrissie in hunting for some new source of hope. And amid the modern ticky-tacky replacing the venerable dwellings of Yorkshire, Nell does in fact find a kind of peace. A quiet tale, with considerable muttering about physical and political change, but with pleasant people who generate a mild interest.
Pub Date: July 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14419-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996
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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