In mystery writer Dorner’s latest foray into literary fiction (Winter Roads, Summer Fields: stories, 1992; etc.), a group of six middle-aged women come to terms with the diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s in one of their own. Close friends since their days at a Catholic college in the ’60s, the women have taken different life paths, sporadically staying in touch and keeping track of each other. In a reunion of sorts, they gather at a secluded lakeside B&B, which they dub “Camp Men-O-Pause,” to evoke college memories and comfort their unofficial “leader” Micky, the proud center of this clique of erstwhile honor students, who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Micky has made an ultimatum to her closest friend in the group—having to do with whether Jan will be able to assist in her suicide. Jan carries the secret as a burden throughout their vacation, while the others enjoy the outdoors and each other’s companionship and as, slowly, each of the women’s lives is revealed—Mary having suffered through a bitter divorce; Sharon gradually sinking into alcoholism; the “bohemian” artist Linda disconsolate at the breakup of her affair with a married man; and Peg struggling financially with her husband. Each meditation on the past is brought crashingly back to the present by Micky, whose good days give the women cause to rejoice and whose blank-eyed bad days leave them devastated. Though Dorner employs an easy narrative, the story here of six good Catholic girls growing into six good Catholic women (though they—ve left the church) results in too much a blurred group of five contrasted only with the singularity of Micky and her sad decline. The tragedy of Micky’s disease is acute, and its depiction faithful to reality, but motivations can seem thin, as when a trek into the woods can brace the group’s spirits and bring about, for Micky, a rather abrupt preference for continuing life. Indistinguishable characters harm what could have been an absorbing account of friends accepting their own aging and death.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57131-027-4
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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