by Michael Hite ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2007
A boat worth catching.
On her last day, an old woman recounts the day that changed her life.
Amelia Moorland has refused all entreaties from her neighbors to help celebrate her 100th birthday. She has no time or interest in it, for Amelia knows deep down that today will be her last, and she wants to clear her name. One fateful day, 80 years earlier, she followed her best friend Samantha onto a ferry leaving Nantucket. Amelia watched as Samantha tied herself to her heavy suitcase and then threw it overboard, dragging her down with it. Instinctively, Amelia dove in after her friend but was unable to save her. However, when Amelia was rescued by the ferry crew, no one remembered seeing Samantha jump and her body was never recovered. The investigation brought great shame to Amelia and her family, and no one around at the time of the incident ever looked at Amelia the same way again. Interspersed with excerpts from testimony given during the investigation, Amelia tells her life story up to that fateful day and beyond. From the moment she laid eyes on Samantha the day she arrived with her family on Nantucket, Amelia sensed an uncanny connection between them. Within just a few days of knowing her, she could hear Samantha speak to her in her sleep. As they grew closer over the years, Samantha would warn her of coming danger, especially while Amelia served with the Red Cross in Europe during World War I. Though Samantha could communicate with her friend telepathically and sense the future, her powers could not change their destinies. In his debut novel, Hite has drawn an accomplished work of historical fiction that brings the early 20th century to life in vivid detail, especially as it was lived on Nantucket. He has created a strong, engaging narrator in Amelia, and a sensitive, thoughtful rendering of an unusual friendship between two women.
A boat worth catching.Pub Date: April 26, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-595-42033-9
Page Count: 238
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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