Passable tale of love and lies in a proper climate.
A complacent Englishwoman who has it all discovers a life of passion and subterfuge in middle age.
Apart from the inclusion of the British class system to add some extra weight, the story of Dilly, her husband Francis, and her lover Matthew is little different from the predictable pattern of late-life adultery. Dilly, an unwanted and unloved child of near-poverty (nits in her hair, no shoes for school) grows up to be a pretty, unambitious 19-year-old. She meets Francis Holmes in the art gallery where she works, and, as he’s buying a Hockney for his new office (he’s a lawyer), he asks Dilly out. Six months later she’s married, almost 30 years later she has two grown sons, grandchildren, a luxurious London house, and a husband who still adores her. What she doesn’t have is passion. Returning from the funeral of her best friend, Dilly meets Matthew, a bit younger, certainly scruffier, but seductive all the same. The two begin an affair, and then, dangerously, fall in love. Dilly lies to Francis, telling him she’s visiting her old aunt Eliza when instead she’s off with her lover. The lies compound, she arranges for Matthew to stay with her at her summer cottage, they hide behind bushes from prying eyes, and she promises that she’ll leave her husband. Much of the story is taken up with Dilly’s anguished guilt at being unfaithful to her loving and truly lovely husband and, in the face of Matthew’s passion, not caring. There are a few truly juicy subplots—Aunt Eliza’s memories of her marriage to a homosexual, and Dilly’s sister Virginia’s unbridled jealousy over her sister’s good fortune in life—though the main plot, the story of Dilly’s affair, too often drones on about undiscovered passion without offering much action to go with it.
Passable tale of love and lies in a proper climate.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-30782-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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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