A cloying first novel, from the author ofThe Island of the Mapmaker’s Wife (stories: 1996), about a 40-year-old academic who, unable to find the right man, wants a house and a baby. She gets them. Lucy, a historian at a Boston-area college, is stymied on her book, stifled in love, and full of questions for wise Hana Matsuo, who laughingly utters cryptic Asian wisdom about love as she tends to her children. This is, be prepared, the sort of book in which everything ethnic is wise and charming and all men—except the true love—are selfishly infantile and used to getting their way.) Among the men Lucy is involved with is professor David, who huffs and puffs, doesn’t like to be crossed in conversation, but is basically a big ol” huggy bear whom Lucy might come to love. Until: “If you had a child, you’d pay too much attention to the baby. Not to me anymore.” Fetch the guy his bottle. Then there’s professor Martin, on leave in Japan, who spends his days wandering sacred gardens and pondering cryptic Asian wisdom about love. Martin was Lucy’s great passion, but he couldn—t bring himself to leave his wife. Finally, there’s professor Arthur, recently moved to Somerville from Berkeley, who tends to his dying wife and—right, recites cryptically wise Asian poetry about love. Recent immigrants Mr. and Mrs. Yu (whom Lucy “respectfully” cannot call by their first names) are funny/charming/wise and add local color, as well as the oddities of a new tongue, to this incestuous band of feeling folk. After much sensitive dithering and agonizingly precious dinner parties, Lucy finally winds up with Martin in the house widower Arthur leaves her in Somerville. She adopts a Romanian child and has a garden. No “rag-and-bone shop of the heart” in sight, just page after page of plastic, politically correct “feelings.”
Pub Date: Aug. 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-517-70444-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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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