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Actress Hunt (Broadway star of Hair, mother of Mick Jagger's first child) follows two previous books (an autobiography published in England; a novel, Joy, 1991) with an old-fashioned race-and-sex melodrama set in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1913. Theodore ``Teenotchy'' Simms, 19 and black, works hard at cleaning house for the old Quaker he reveres—a man whose genuine concern is adulterated with self-interest and guilt—and at blocking out ugliness; Teenotchy's mostly repressed the childhood memory of witnessing his mother's rape and murder. But there's a lot he doesn't know: angry, hard-working Aunt Em, with whom he lives (who never considered herself a ``slave'' but rather a ``hostage''), is actually his grandmother; she bore his mother to the white master who later took sexual advantage of his own child. Meanwhile, Teenotchy's docile simplicity can't last after he takes a second job in the Tewksbury stables—he's a superb horseman—and meets visiting English aristocrat Alexander Blake. Alexander has romanticized black people ever since Uncle Tom's Cabin, and his uncertain sexual orientation comes clear as soon as he lays eyes on Teenotchy. This dangerous infatuation, in the midst of a virulently racist and homophobic society, may open the world to Teenotchy—or lead to disaster. Heavy-handed—but the 1913 setting provides some richness (the beginning of the modern era—a scant 50 years after Emancipation- -was not far, culturally, from the slavery era); the love/hate sexuality between master and slave is almost unbearably painful; and there's interest in seeing this familiar pulp material from an African-American perspective.

Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1993

ISBN: 0-525-93575-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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