An inviting take on universal themes.
Crane (Frenemies, 2007, etc.) explores a woman’s discoveries about sisterly love, first love and true love.
The story is more serious than the book’s frivolous cover would suggest. It concerns Courtney Cassel, a professional cellist whose accomplishments are praised by everyone, including fiery best friend Verena and adoring fiancé Lucas. Unfortunately, Courtney’s achievements are largely ignored by those who matter most to her—her family. After Courtney’s father abandoned the clan, Courtney became lost amidst the commanding personalities of sisters Raine and Norah. Raine turned into a rebellious hippie, her Birkenstocks and creative impulses the opposite of Norah’s intellectualism and Type A personality. The chasm between the two grew exponentially, and things only got worse at Norah’s wedding, where Raine caused a scene, then took off for California with Matt Cheney, Raine’s best friend and Courtney’s first love. Six years later, Courtney is convinced that her engagement party will be the perfect opportunity to reunite her family, and she accompanies Lucas to San Francisco. She finds Raine tending bar and exploring her artistic side by taking anatomical self-portraits, and comes face-to-face with Matt Cheney. Gorgeous and alluring as ever, the rush of attraction she has always felt toward him comes flooding back. Instead of setting a wedding date, Courtney becomes consumed by her desire to both win Raine’s affection (while maintaining Norah’s approval) and understand her feelings for Lucas and Matt. Lucas and Matt and Norah and Raine, though somewhat two-dimensional, are artfully pitted against one another. In this world of catty sibling rivalry, where the protagonist serves as doormat, Lucas remains the most admirable, solid character, and Verena, despite her penchant for shopping and promiscuity, acts as the surprising moral compass. While it takes Courtney some time to learn that self-worth comes from within, her innocence, sincerity and sense of humor will keep readers entertained.
An inviting take on universal themes.Pub Date: April 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-69856-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy,...
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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