Insightful about self-harm, addiction, and patterns that bind.
A woman struggling with addiction and self-cutting confronts her past choices and comes to new understandings in Kasimatis’ debut novel.
It’s 1963, and 10-year-old Mary Therese Panos—called Mae—is being sent to St. Mary’s boarding school, an hour from her Chicago home. Her Uncle Nick is paying for it to help out Mae’s mother, a struggling widow. As the novel goes forward and backward in time, Mae’s experience of being forced into a situation not of her choosing becomes a pattern in her life. By 1970, Mae, now 17, is a senior at St. Mary’s and defiant, sneaking joints and falling in love with Jack. She wants to marry soon, but Uncle Nick says no, and Jack suggests waiting two years. Enraged, Mae breaks off the engagement. In early 1971, Mae has become reckless enough to get wasted at a party and have sex that she doesn’t remember with a boy she’s just met, Joe “Tommy” Thomasini. When she gets pregnant, she’s urged to have the baby adopted, but Tommy puts aside his Notre Dame scholarship to study engineering for a quick wedding and a hardware-store job. By 1979, Mae keeps a tidy house and loves her daughter, Kristy, though she resents Tommy’s long hours and resists his enthusiasm about moving to a better neighborhood. When he surprises her by buying a new house, Mae again feels outmaneuvered and falls into a cycle of substance abuse, depression, and self-harm. But a moment of grace in her downward spiral could be the key to accepting the help she needs. In her novel, Kasimatis brings an observant eye to the threads in Mae’s personality and history that contribute to her challenges. Although the first chapter is somewhat overwritten, the book generally portrays Mae’s anguished point of view delicately while also showing its limitations, such as self-pity and a lack of appreciation for how others have also faced reduced choices. The novel builds nicely toward Christmas and Mae’s humiliating public meltdown, followed by an illuminating aftermath—occurring, as the chapter title slyly points out, just before Epiphany.
Insightful about self-harm, addiction, and patterns that bind.Pub Date: April 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5481-6759-2
Page Count: 252
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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