Which school does Zoe land in? Not telling. All in all: big fun for select readers.
For its intended audience, a laugh-out-loud debut about admissions to Manhattan’s coveted private schools.
The story runs from September through February. All private school admissions must be sent in by the Thursday after Labor Day, and many of the parental twists and turns here are taken from real life, like one man’s donation of $1 million to get his obstreperous son into kindergarten. Helen Drager’s daughter, Zoe, is completing The School’s K-8 grades and now must get into a private high-school as a sophomore. Helen, an art historian, has asked for admission forms from six: the Fancy Girls’ School, the Progressive School, the Quasi Country School, the Safety School, the Very Brainy Girls’ School, and the Downtown School. Advising her is best friend Sara Nash, admissions officer of The School, which claims itself able to get any of its students into their place of choice. But queenly Pamela Rothchild, The School’s matriarch, plays hide-and-seek with parents desperate for help in getting their children into high school as she cozies up to big donors and celebs. Even Sara can’t fill the kindergarten quota without Pamela’s okay, while poor Helen, whose unhelpful husband produces TV Cooking Network shows, now wakes at three a.m. suffering from “nocturnal admissions.” Must Zoe’s best friend, Julian, a cross-dresser who had the lead in Auntie Mame, go to boarding school? With October as interview month, nervous Zoe asks Julian whether she should give blow jobs to be a popular coed in high school. November brings a collective soothing to the insecurities of parents. For admissions directors, December is the cruelest month, stuffed with eleventh-hour applications. And there’s funereal news for hopeful parents: haughty Pamela, overthrown, quits for a fictitious better job. January finds Helen fending off a romantic art dealer, while Sara, The School’s new head, does psychic housecleaning.
Which school does Zoe land in? Not telling. All in all: big fun for select readers.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-53303-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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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