Family history and feminist themes combine in an earnest but strained debut—about women's struggle for selfhood at the turn of the century. Set in what is today the Adirondacks Park but was then a mining camp, Perks's tale traces the evolving if unlikely friendship between two women: One the rich but seizure-prone Regina Sartwell, her life loosely based on that of the author's own great- great-aunt; the other Olive Honsinger, a miner's wife and daughter. The pair meet when Regina, visiting the camp with her stereotypically mine-owning Victorian uncle, throws herself from a window before a crowd that happens to include Olive. Regina survives, but her epileptic fits, diagnosed as hysteria and incipient madness, have tried the family long enough. Her doctor has given her six months to shape up before she's sent to an asylum where radical genital surgery will be performed. Meanwhile, Regina, attracted by Olive's golden hair, insists that her new friend take care of her while she recovers from her fall. Olive does so because her family needs the money, but the job isn't easy. She not only has to deal with the capricious Regina, who becomes pregnant after seducing Olive's Swedish brother-in-law, then has an abortion that gets her into even more trouble, but she also—like the reader—has to contend with the novel's long political agenda: so that, as Regina and Olive's friendship grows, the two encounter despised gypsies, striking miners, female herbalists, prejudiced male doctors, asylums, a breakaway Shaker colony, and the implications of romantic friendship between women. Regina finally finds peace- -and refuge from her cruel family—with the Shaker women, while also making new lives possible for Olive and her family by means of a gift. Perks tries hard to break new ground, and yet her first novel, like a literary beast of burden, is overloaded with good intentions.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14065-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
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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