Warmly nostalgic without giving in to saccharine oversentimentality, this intricate tale chronicles an absorbing and...
A debut novel explores the complex story of an old house and those connected to it.
In 1894, local businessman Wilhelm Winkler purchases an impressive new property on Summit Avenue as his family home. His wife, Sophie, and daughter, Ellen, marvel at the house’s state-of-the-art facilities, including electric lighting and a flushing toilet. Fast-forward to the modern day, and Carole Browning, an attorney, learns that she has inherited a century-old property from an estranged great-grandfather, Henry Winkler. Along with her husband, Carlos, a cartoonist, she visits the house to find it in a state of dire disrepair (“It looked, Carole thought, like a cartoon haunted house, something Carlos would draw. Compared to the beautiful homes around it, it was like an ugly bruise”). For Carole, adopted at the age of 2 and with no knowledge of her ancestral line by birth, the house is a powerful reminder of the family she never knew. Her initial reaction is to distance herself from this emotional burden. Carlos, however, is eager to begin renovations, and, in doing so, all manner of secrets are revealed. The skillful layering of narratives, comprising the stories of the four generations of Winklers who have called the dwelling home, reflects vividly how a property can be inscribed and reinscribed by the lives of its inhabitants. For Carole, coming to know the house on Summit Avenue may lead her to better understand herself. This compelling novel creatively imagines the microhistory of a family in an unnamed Midwestern city. Through what is essentially a history of everyday life charted across several generations, it is possible to sense America as a changing nation. Morlock is acutely aware of this perpetual state of decay and renewal in his writing: “Like people, old houses wear down, and like people too, it seems, fall out of favor with age. In the sixties and seventies especially, Summit Avenue was abandoned by the well-off in favor of the newer suburbs sprouting like weeds in all directions.” This strong grasp of history is further bolstered by the author’s consistently sharp, elegant prose and a spellbinding ability to craft realistic flesh-and-blood characters, the fates of whom truly matter to the reader.
Warmly nostalgic without giving in to saccharine oversentimentality, this intricate tale chronicles an absorbing and affecting family journey across generations.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-79032-8
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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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