A conventional Irish-American first novel with all expected elements—close-knit families, suffocating religiosity, and mordant fatalism—that nonetheless movingly celebrates love and true grit. Troy, New York, is home to the Malloy clan. Once Shanty Irish, they are now working their way up to better things. As the story begins in 1964, Uncle Pat Malloy, who worked on the railroad, falls and freezes to death; later that year beloved Uncle Johnny, a firefighter, sickens and dies. The year of tragedies ends with the death on Christmas day of Clare and Mike Malloy's infant son. All these deaths are described in alternate chapters, mostly by Mike, Clare, and their two daughters, teenage Maureen (Mo) and younger sister Margie. Clare had not wanted the baby—it meant giving up teaching and losing the income which supplemented Mike's post office job—but had soon adjusted to the prospect, which made the loss even harder to bear. It is only assuaged by working hard on brother-in-law Danny Malloy's successful mayoral campaign. But the real focus of the story, despite brief appearances of Clare's ``lace-curtain'' Irish family, who look down on the Malloys though their own money was made bootlegging during Prohibition, is young Mo. Beautiful and talented, she is encouraged by Clare to excel academically. She does, graduating with a full scholarship, but the fabled luck of the Irish is a capricious thing. Mo falls in love with Jewish fellow student David Marcovitch, becomes pregnant, rejects an abortion, and marries Roger, who wants to avoid the draft. The family is there for her all the way, but it is only in 1982, when Mo visits the Vietnam Memorial—David had been killed fighting—that she feels her years of grieving are over, that she can ``go home'' in peace. Nothing new or rivetingly insightful, but a pleasingly told tale that touches the heart.
Pub Date: March 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13951-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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
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