Some startling scenes and enchanting writing, but Flook's depiction of feeble psyches and unending despair ultimately...
As in Flook's first novel (Family Night, 1993), a dark, strong start lapses into weary complacency as the characters' weaknesses prove insurmountable and addictions to drugs, sex, and loss become their guiding lights.
After Willis gets dishonorably discharged from the Navy for pilfering from a supply warehouse, he goes to his stepmother's home in Newport, R.I. While he claims to be returning to care for Rennie, who took him in after his father died when he was 13, she seems more capable of dealing with her fast-approaching death from cancer than Willis, whose resolve to keep up a good front is further eroded by the constant pain in his arm from a carelessly self-inflicted fracture. Rennie, who seems to need his dependency more than his strength, invites Willis to sample her supply of morphine, and he becomes immediately addicted. Enter a neighbor named Holly, transfixed by the goings-on across the street. All three characters battle to escape their demons. Rennie suffers under the mocking title ``Kiss of Death,'' awarded to any woman who's had two husbands die at sea (she even had a third, Willis's father, expire unexpectedly from a heart attack), and fights to prevent her biological son from putting her in a rest home and taking away her seaside house. Willis struggles to come to terms with his mother's death, a freak accident provoked by his father's violence, and searches for anything that will fill his emptiness, turning to meaningless sex and dangerous, shady business deals. Holly tries to start over after her husband leaves her to buy Carvel Ice Cream franchises with his new, rich lover. The three misfits become intimate, and as each works to keep the others afloat, they discover deeper failings and hidden strengths.
Some startling scenes and enchanting writing, but Flook's depiction of feeble psyches and unending despair ultimately anesthetizes the reader.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43183-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
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