First-time novelist Stein tells the surprisingly appealing story of a teenager living through the complexity of a premature adulthood. Comparisons between Stein's narrator, 16-year-old Will Sterling, and the immortal Holden Caulfield are inescapableWill wisecracks his way through his strengths, weaknesses, and myriad adolescent confusionsbut the kid also owes something to Joyce's Stephen Dedalus. In place of aesthetics and the loss of faith, Will has math and suburban New Jersey: He's obsessed with probability, doesn't exactly make fast time with the chicks, hangs out with an older married couple and their kids, and suffers his mother's endless stream of desperation dates. ``I came to understand one basic law of probability that I had missed: we are prepared for the last thing that happened and not what's next,'' Will comments after aspects of his stable world begin to get twisted. His older friends, Terri and Shep Kean, split up, and he drifts into an awkward yet instructive sexual relationship with Sara, the only woman in his life who is roughly his age. Sara has a boyfriend, so scenes of her groping and petting with Will carry a certain illicit charge, but Stein presents their initiation in a thoroughly off-kilter manner, spicing the youthful seduction with oddball banter. In Sara, Will has met his matchso much so that you want the two of them to endure into their late 20s rather then pass through the inevitable breakup. Not that Sara is Will's only concern; the novel provides plentiful side excursions from its swift and skillfully compressed plot: basketball, driving to New York, the deaths of fathers, hanging out with black guys, and the usual trials of high schoolall are captured in Stein's adeptly woven fictional net. In other hands, this could have emerged as just another tale of an irritatingly precocious child hero. From Stein, though, the result is an absolute charmer with a spry and sarcastic edge.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-877946-57-5
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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